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SDtje Htberai&e ^literature Series 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 
AND OTHER ESSAYS 



CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER 




HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY 

Beaton : 4 Park Street ; New York : 80 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago : 37S-38S Wabash Avenue 



CONTENTS. J53/SZ 

/7^£ PA0E 

A-HUNTING OF THE DEEB . 3 

How I Killed a Beak t ..... 20 

Lost in the Woods 30 

Camping Out 42 

A Wilderness Romance 56 

What Some People Call Pleasure 69 



Copyright, 1878, 
By CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 

Copyright, 1906, 
By SUSAN LEE WARNER. 

All rights reserved, 

Received from 
Copyright Office. 

12Ag'09 




CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER. 

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

Like Mr. Aldrich, who played with his boyhood in The 
Story of a Bad Boy, Mr. Warner dealt with himself as a 
sort of third person in Being a Boy, the scenes of which 
are laid in a primitive Massachusetts country neighborhood. 
The place which stood for its portrait in the book is Charle* 
mont, near the eastern opening of the Hoosac tunnel. Here 
Mr. Warner spent his boyhood, removing to the place, when 
his father died, from Plainfield, in the same State, where he 
was born September 12, 1829. He was five years old when 
he was taken to Charlemont, and he remained there eight 
years, and then removed to Cazenovia, N. Y. His guardian 
intended him for business life, and placed him after his 
school days as clerk in a store, but his intellectual ambition 
was strong, and against all adverse fates he secured a col- 
legiate education at Hamilton College, where he graduated 
in 1851. His college many years later conferred on him 
the degree of Doctor of Letters. 

When he was in college he showed his bent for literature 
by contributing to the magazines of the day, and shortly 
after graduating compiled a Book of Eloquence. For the 
next half dozen years he was busy establishing himself ■ in 
life, choosing the law at first as his profession, but really 
practicing the various pursuits which should finally qualify 
him for his predestined vocation as a man of letters. He 
spent two years in frontier life with a surveying party in 
Missouri, mainly to secure a more robust condition of body ; 
he lectured, did hack work, wrote letters to journals, looked 
wistfully at public life and oratory, opened a law office in 
Chicago, and took what legal business he could find. 



fv BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

It was while he was there living hy miscellaneous ven» 
tures that J. R. Hawley, now U. S. Senator from Connecti- 
cut, was attracted by the letters which Mr. Warner was con- 
tributing to his paper, the Hartford Press, and invited his 
correspondent to remove to Hartford and become assistant 
editor of the paper. This was shortly before the opening 
of the war for the Union. When Mr. Hawley entered the 
army, Mr. Warner became editor in chief ; and when the 
Press became merged in the older and more substantial 
Courant, he became one of the proprietors and editors of 
that paper. 

In that position he remained until his death, although 
in his last years he was relieved from much of the office 
work of an editor. It was in connection with his journal- 
istic duties that his first real stroke in literature was made. 
He was busy with the political discussions in which the press 
was involved, and most of his writing was of this sort. But 
his morning recreation in his garden suggested to him the 
relief of writing playful sketches for his paper, drawn from 
this occupation, and the popularity attending them led ta 
a collection of the sketches in the well-known volume My. 
Summer in a Garden. 

In 1868 Mr. Warner went to Europe for a year and 
turned his travel-experience into sketches which were gath- 
ered into Saunterings. This was* the beginning of his more 
distinctly literary life. He found his pleasure as well as his 
recuperation thereafter chiefly in rambling and in noting 
men and things. The more distinctive of his books of travel 
growing out of this habit were Baddeck and That Sort oj 
Thing, which is a humorous sketch of a journey in Nova 
Scotia and among the scenes of Longfellow's ISvangeline ; 
books of eastern travel, My Winter on the Nile and In the 
Levant; rambles chiefly in the Spanish peninsula under 
the name A Roundabout Journey, and a number of papers 
relating to American life and scenery gathered into the two 
volumes Studies in the South and West and Our Italy^ 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. T 

a warm eulogy of southern California. A genuine love of 
nature bore rich fruit in the Adirondack sketches In the 
Wilderness, from which the contents of this selection are 
taken. 

By a natural transfer of his own habit into a more purely 
literary expression, Mr. Warner wrote a book, half story, 
half travel, entitled Their Pilgrimage, which carried sev- 
eral characters from one watering-place in America to an- 
other, enabling him thus to sketch manners and make 
observations in a light, satiric vein, on some phases of 
American life. This venture it was that led him proba- 
bly into the more positive field of fictitious literature, and 
he produced A Little Journey in the World, which, under 
the guise of story, was really a serious inquiry into the 
tendencies of social life when affected strongly by the in- 
sidious influence of wealth, especially newly-gotten wealth. 
The publication of this novel led to the writing of two 
other novels, The Golden House and That Fortune, pub- 
lished at intervals of a few years. These novels carried 
forward some of the inquiries started in A Little Journey 
in the World, and the reappearance of certain characters, 
with a further delineation of their experience, gives the three 
books something of the form of a trilogy. 

For several years Mr. Warner held an editorial position 
on Harper s Monthly, and many of his contributions were 
made to that magazine. The light, suggestive essay, best 
illustrated by his Backlog Studies, is perhaps the form of 
literature with which he is most identified, but the serious 
side of his nature is never held distinct from the humorous, 
as the vein of humor also runs through his more solid work. 
His interest in literature was always very strong, and led 
him into the delivery of some forcible addresses at college 
anniversaries and into the editorship of the American Men 
of Letters series, to which he contributed the volume on 
Washington Irving, who was his first great admiration in 
modern literature. He also conducted, as editor in chief, 



vi BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. 

the extensive work entitled Library of the World's Best 
Literature. His interest in literature and travel was not 
that of a dilettante. His humor is scarcely more promi- 
nent than his earnest thoughtfulness, and he gave practical 
expression to his thought in the part which he took in pub- 
lic affairs in Hartford and in the moving question of prison 
reform. 

Mr. Warner died in Hartford, Conn., October 20, 1900. 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 



If civilization owes a debt of gratitude to the self* 
sacrificing sportsmen who have cleared the Adiron- 
dack regions of catamounts and savage trout, what 
shall be said of the army which has so nobly relieved 
them of the terror of the deer ? The deer-slayers have 
somewhat celebrated their exploits in print ; but I 
think that justice has never been done them. 

The American deer in the wilderness, left to him- 
self, leads a comparatively harmless but rather stupid 
life, with only such excitement as his own timid 
fancy raises. It was very seldom that one of his tribe 
was eaten by the North American tiger. For a wild 
animal he is very domestic, simple in his tastes, reg- 
ular in his habits, affectionate in his family. Unfor- 
tunately for his repose, his haunch is as tender as 
his heart. Of all wild creatures he is one of the 
most graceful in action, and he poses with the skill 
of an experienced model. I have seen the goats on 
Mount Pentelicus scatter at the approach of a stran- 
ger, climb to the sharp points of projecting rocks, and 
attitudinize in the most self-conscious manner, strik- 
ing at once those picturesque postures against the sky 
with which Oriental pictures have made us and them 
familiar. But the whole proceeding was theatrical. 
Greece is the home of art, and it is rare to find any. 
thing there natural and unstudied. I presume that 



4 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 

these goats have no nonsense about them when they 
are alone with the goat-herds, any more than the goat- 
herds have, except when they come to pose in the stu- 
dio ; but the long ages of culture, the presence always 
to the eye of the best models and the forms of im- 
mortal beauty, the heroic friezes of the Temple of 
Theseus, the marble processions of sacrificial animal* 
have had a steady moulding, educating influence 
equal to a society of decorative art upon the people 
and the animals who have dwelt in this artistic atmos- 
phere. The Attic goat has become an artificially ar- 
tistic being ; though of course he is not now what he 
was, as a poser, in the days of Polycletus. There ii 
opportunity for a very instructive essay by Mr. E. A. 
Freeman on the decadence of the Attic goat under 
the influence of the Ottoman Turk. 

The American deer, in the free atmosphere of our 
country, and as yet untouched by our decorative art, 
is without self-consciousness, and all his attitudes are 
free and unstudied. The favorite position of the 
deer — his fore-feet in the shallow margin of the lake, 
among the lily-pads, his antlers thrown back and his 
nose in the air at the moment he hears the stealthy 
breaking of a twig in the forest — is still spirited and 
graceful, and wholly unaffected by the pictures of him 
which the artists have put upon canvas. 

Wherever you go in the Northern forest, you will 
find deer-paths. So plainly marked and well-trodden 
are they, that it is easy to mistake them for trails 
made by hunters ; but he who follows one of them is 
soon in difficulties. He may find himself climbing 
through cedar-thickets an almost inaccessible cliff, or 
immersed in the intricacies of a marsh. The " run," 
in one direction, will lead to water ; but, in the other, 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 5 

it climbs the highest hills, to which the deer retires, 
for safety and repose, in impenetrable thickets. The 
hunters, in winter, find them congregated in " yards," 
where they can be surrounded and shot as easily as 
our troops shoot Comanche women and children in 
their winter villages. These little paths are full of 
pitfalls among the roots and stones ; and, nimble as 
the deer is, he sometimes breaks one of his slender 
legs in them. Yet he knows how to treat himself 
without a surgeon. I knew of a tame deer in a settle- 
ment in the edge of the forest who had the misfortune 
to break her leg. She immediately disappeared with 
a delicacy rare in an invalid, and was not seen for two 
weeks. Her friends had given her up, supposing that 
she had dragged herself away into the depths of the 
woods, and died of starvation ; when one day she re- 
turned, cured of lameness, but thin as a virgin shadow. 
She had the sense to shun the doctor ; to lie down 
in some safe place, and patiently wait for her leg 
to heal. I have observed in many of the more re- 
fined animals this sort of shyness and reluctance to 
give trouble which excite our admiration when noticed 
in mankind. 

The deer is called a timid animal, and taunted with 
possessing courage only when he is " at bay ; " the 
stag will fight when he can no longer flee ; and the 
doe will defend her young in the face of murderous 
enemies. The deer gets little credit for this eleventh- 
hour bravery. But I think that in any truly Chris- 
tian condition of society the deer would not be con- 
spicuous for cowardice. I suppose that if the Amer- 
ican girl, even as she is described in foreign romances, 
were pursued by bull-dogs, and fired at from behind 
fences every time she ventured out-doors, she would 



6 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 

become timid, and reluctant to go abroad. When 
that golden era comes which the poets think is behind 
us, and the prophets declare is about to be ushered in 
by the opening of the " vials," and the killing of every- 
body who does not believe as those nations believe 
which have the most cannon ; when we all live in real 
concord, — perhaps the gentle-hearted deer will be re- 
spected, and will find that men are not more savage to 
the weak than are the cougars and panthers. If the 
little spotted fawn can think, it must seem to her a 
queer world in which the advent of innocence is hailed 
by the baying of fierce hounds and the " ping " of the 
rifle. 

Hunting the deer in the Adirondacks is conducted 
in the most manly fashion. There are several meth- 
ods, and in none of them is a fair chance to the deer 
considered. A favorite method with .the natives is 
practised in winter, and is called by them " still hunt- 
ing." My idea of still hunting is for one man to go 
alone into the forest, look about for a deer, put his 
wits fairly against the wits of the keen-scented animal, 
and kill his deer, or get lost in the attempt. There 
seems to be a sort of fairness about this. It is private 
assassination, tempered with a little uncertainty about 
finding your man. The still hunting of the natives 
has all the romance and danger attending the slaugh- 
ter of sheep in an abattoir. As the snow gets deep, 
many deer congregate in the depths of the forest, and 
keep a place trodden down, which grows larger as 
they tramp down the snow in search of food. In time 
this refuge becomes a sort of " yard," surrounded by 
unbroken snow-banks. The hunters then make their 
way to this retreat on snow-shoes, and from the top of 
the banks pick oft' the deer at leisure with their rifleS| 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER 7 

and haul them away tc market, until the enclosure is 
pretty much emptied. This is one of the surest meth- 
ods of exterminating the deer ; it is also one of the 
most merciful ; and, being the plan adopted by our 
government for civilizing the Indian, it ought to be 
popular. The only people who object to it are the 
summer sportsmen. They naturally want some pleas- 
ure out of the death of the deer. 

Some of our best sportsmen, who desire to protract 
the pleasure of slaying deer through as many seasons 
as possible, object to the practice of the hunters, who 
make it their chief business to slaughter as many deer 
in a camping-season as they can. Their own rule, 
they say, is to kill a deer only when they need venison 
to eat. Their excuse is specious. What right have 
these sophists to put themselves into a desert place, 
out of the reach of provisions, and then ground a 
right to slay deer on their own improvidence ? If it 
is necessary for these people to have anything to eat v 
which I doubt, it is not necessary that they should 
have the luxury of venison. 

One of the most picturesque methods of hunting 
the poor deer is called " floating." The person, with 
murder in his heart, chooses a cloudy night, seats him- 
self, rifle in hand, in a canoe, which is noiselessly pad- 
dled by the guide, and explores the shore of the lake 
or the dark inlet. In the bow of the boat is a light 
in a " jack," the rays of which are shielded from the 
boat and its occupants. A deer comes down to feed 
upon the lily-pads. The boat approaches him. He 
looks up, and stands a moment, terrified or fascinated 
by the bright flames. In that moment the sportsman 
is supposed to shoot the deer. As an historical fact, 
his hand usually shakes, so that he misses the animal, 



8 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 

or only wounds him ; and the stag limps away to die 
after days of suffering. Usually, however, the hunt- 
ers remain out all night, get stiff from cold and the 
cramped position in the boat, and, when they return 
in the morning to camp, cloud their future existence 
by the assertion that they " heard a big buck ; ' mov- 
ing along the shore, but the people in camp made so 
much noise that he was frightened off. 

By all odds, the favorite and prevalent mode is 
hunting with dogs. The dogs do the hunting, the 
men the killing. The hounds are sent into the forest 
to rouse the deer, and drive him from his cover. 
They climb the mountains, strike the trails, and go 
baying and yelping on the track of the poor beast. 
The deer have their established run-ways, as I said ; 
and, when they are disturbed in their retreat, they 
are certain to attempt to escape by following one 
which invariably leads to some lake or stream. All 
that the hunter has to do is to seat himself by one of 
these run-ways, or sit in a boat on the lake, and wait 
the coming of the pursued deer. The frightened 
beast, fleeing from the unreasoning brutality of the 
hounds, will often seek the open country, with a mis- 
taken confidence in the humanity of man. To kill a 
deer when he suddenly passes one on a run-way de- 
mands presence of mind, and quickness of aim : to 
shoot him from the boat, after he has plunged panting 
Into the lake, requires the rare ability to hit a moving 
object the size of a deer's head a few rods distant. 
Either exploit is sufficient to make a hero of a com- 
mon man. To paddle up to the swimming deer, and 
cut his throat, is a sure means of getting venison, and 
has its charms for some. Even women, and doctors 
of divinity, have enjoyed this exquisite pleasure. It 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 9 

cannot be denied that we are so constituted by a wise 
Creator as to feel a delight in killing a wild animal 
which we do not experience in killing a tame one. 

The pleasurable excitement of a deer-hunt has 
never, I believe, been regarded from the deer's point 
cf view. I happen to be in a position by reason of 
a lucky Adirondack experience, to present it in that 
light. I am sorry if this introduction to my little 
story has seemed long to the reader: it is too late 
now to skip it ; but he can recoup himself by omitting 
the story. 

Early on the morning of the 23d of August, 1877, 
a doe was feeding on Basin Mountain. The night 
had been warm and showery, and the morning opened 
in an undecided way. The wind was southerly : it is 
what the deer call a dog-wind, having come to know 
quite well the meaning of " a southerly wind and a 
cloudy sky." The sole companion of the doe was her 
only child, a charming little fawn, whose brown coat 
was just beginning to be mottled with the beautiful 
spots which make this young creature as lovely as the 
gazelle. The buck, its father, had been that night on 
a long tramp across the mountain to Clear Pond, and 
had not yet returned : he went ostensibly to feed on 
the succulent lily-pads there. " He f eedeth among the 
lilies until the day break and the shadows flee away, 
and he should be here by this hour ; but he cometb. 
not," she said, " leaping upon the mountains, skipping 
upon the hills." Clear Pond was too far off for the 
young mother to go with her fawn for a night's pleas- 
ure. It was a fashionable watering-place at this sea- 
son among the deer ; and the doe may have remem- 
bered, not without uneasiness, the moonlight meetings 
of a frivolous society there. But the buck did not 



10 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 

come : he was very likely sleeping under one of the 
ledges on Tight Nippin. Was he alone ? "I charge 
you, by the roes and by the hinds of the field, that 
ye stir not nor awake my love till he please." 

The doe was feeding, daintily cropping the tender 
leaves of the young shoots, and turning from time to 
time to regard her offspring. The fawn had taken his 
morning meal, and now lay curled up on a bed o£ 
moss, watching contentedly, with his large, soft brown 
eyes, every movement of his mother. The great eyes 
followed her with an alert entreaty; and, if the 
mother stepped a pace or two farther away in feed- 
ing, tbe fawn made a half-movement, as if to rise and 
follow her. You see, she was his sole dependence in 
all the world. But he was quickly reassured when 
she turned her gaze on him ; and if, in alarm, he ut- 
tered a plaintive cry, she bounded to him at once, 
and, with every demonstration of affection, licked his 
mottled skin till it shone again. 

It was a pretty picture, — maternal love on the one 
part, and happy trust on the other. The doe was 
a beauty, and would have been so considered any- 
where, as graceful and winning a creature as the sun 
that day shone on, — slender limbs, not too heavy 
flanks, round body, and aristocratic head, with small 
ears, and luminous, intelligent, affectionate eyes. 
How alert, supple, free, she was ! What untaught 
grace in every movement ! What a charming pose 
when she lifted her head, and turned it to regard her 
child ! You would have had a companion-picture, if 
you had seen, as I saw that morning, a baby kicking 
about among the dry pine-needles on a ledge above 
the Ausable, in the valley below, while its young 
mother sat near, with an easel before her touching ir 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 11 

Hie color of a reluctant landscape, giving a quick look 
at the sky and the outline of the Twin Mountains, 
and bestowing every third glance upon the laughing 
boy, — art in its infancy. 

The doe lifted her head a little with a quick motion, 
and turned her ear to the south. Had she heard 
something ? Probably it was only the south winds in 
the balsams. There was silence all about in the for- 
est. If the doe had heard anything it was one of the 
distant noises of the world. There are in the woods 
occasional moanings, premonitions of change, which 
are inaudible to the dull ears of men, but which, I 
have no doubt, the forest-folk hear and understand. 
If the doe's suspicions were excited for an instant, 
they were gone as soon. With an affectionate glance 
at her fawn, she continued picking up her breakfast. 

But suddenly she started, head erect, eyes dilated, 
a tremor in her limbs. She took a step ; she turned 
her head to the south ; she listened intently. There 
was a sound, — a distant, prolonged note, bell-toned, 
pervading the woods, shaking the air in smooth vibra- 
tions. It was repeated. The doe had no doubt now. 
She shook like the sensitive mimosa when a footstep 
approaches. It was the baying of a hound ! It was 
far off, — at the foot of the mountain. Time enough 
to fly ; time enough to put miles between her and the 
hound, before he should come upon her fresh trail ; 
time enough to escape away through the dense forest, 
and hide in the recesses of Panther Gorge ; yes, time 
enough. But there was the fawn. The cry of the 
hound was repeated, more distinct this time. The 
mother instinctively bounded away a few paces. The 
fawn started up with an anxious bleat. The doe 
turned ; she came back ; she could n't leave it. She 



12 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 

bent over it, and licked it, and seemed to say, " Come, 
my child ; we are pursued ; we must go." She 
walked away towards the west, and the little thing 
skipped after her. It was slow going for the slender 
legs, over the fallen logs, and through the rasping 
bushes. The doe bounded in advance, and waited; 
the fawn scrambled after her, slipping and tumbling 
along, very groggy yet on its legs, and whining a 
good deal because its mother kept always moving 
away from it. The fawn evidently did not hear the 
hound ; the little innocent would even have looked 
sweetly at the dog, and tried to make friends with it, 
if the brute had been rushing upon him. By all the 
means at her command the doe urged her young one 
on ; but it was slow work. She might have been a 
mile away while they were making a few rods. 
Whenever the fawn caught up he was quite content 
to frisk about. He wanted more breakfast, for one 
thing ; and his mother would n't stand still. She 
moved on continually ; and his weak legs were tangled 
in the roots of the narrow deer-path. 

Shortly came a sound that threw the doe into a 
panic of terror, — a short, sharp yelp, followed by a 
prolonged howl, caught up and re-echoed by other 
bayings along the mountain-side. The doe knew 
what that meant. One hound had caught her trail, 
and the whole pack responded to the " view-halloo." 
The danger was certain now ; it was near. She 
could not crawl on in this way ; the dogs would soon 
be upon them. She turned again for flight : the fawn, 
scrambling after her, tumbled over, and bleated pite- 
ously. The baying, now emphasized by the yelp of 
certainty, came nearer. Flight with the fawn was 
impossible. The doe returned and stood by it, head 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 13 

erect, and nostrils distended. She stood perfectly 
still, but trembling. Perhaps she was thinking. The 
fawn took advantage of the situation, and began to 
draw his luncheon ration. The doe seemed to have 
made up her mind. She let him finish. The fawn, 
having taken all he wanted, lay down contentedly, 
and the doe licked him for a moment. Then, with 
the swiftness of a bird, she dashed away, and in 
a moment was lost in the forest. She went in the 
direction of the hounds. 

According to all human calculations, she was going 
into the jaws of death. So she was : all human calcu- 
lations are selfish. She kept straight on, hearing the 
baying every moment more distinctly. She descended 
the slope of the mountain until she reached the more 
open forest of hard-wood. It was freer going here, 
and the cry of the pack echoed more resoundingly 
in the great spaces. She was going due east, when 
(judging by the sound, the hounds were not far off, 
though they were still hidden by a ridge) she turned 
away towards the north, and kept on at a good pace. 
In five minutes more she heard the sharp, exultant 
yelp of discovery, and then the deep-mouthed howl of 
pursuit. The hounds had struck her trail where she 
turned, and the fawn was safe. 

The doe was in good running condition, the ground 
was not bad, and she felt the exhilaration of the 
chase. For the moment, fear left her, and she bounded 
on with the exaltation of triumph. For a quarter of 
an hour she went on at a slapping pace, clearing the 
moose-bushes with bound after bound, flying over the 
fallen logs, pausing neither for brook or ravine. The 
baying of the hounds grew fainter behind her. But 
she struck a bad piece of going, a dead-wood slash. 



14 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 

It was marvellous to see her skim over it, leaping 
among its intricacies, and not breaking her slender 
legs. No other living animal could do it. But it 
was killing work. She began to pant fearfully ; she 
lost ground. The baying of the hounds was nearer. 
She climbed the hard-wood hill at a slower gait : but, 
once on more level, free ground, her breath came back 
fco her, and she stretched away with new courage, and 
may be a sort of contempt of her heavy pursuers. 

After running at a high speed perhaps half a mile 
farther, it occurred to her that it would be safe now 
to turn to the west, and, by a wide circuit, seek her 
fawn. But, at the moment, she heard a sound that 
chilled her heart. It was the cry of a hound to 
the west of her. The crafty brute had made the cir- 
cuit of the slash, and cut off her retreat. There was 
nothing to do but to keep on ; and on she went, still 
to the north, with the noise of the pack behind her. 
In five minutes more she had passed into a hill- 
side clearing. Cows and young steers were grazing 
there. She heard a tinkle of bells. Below her, down 
the mountain-slope, were other clearings, broken by 
patches of woods. Fences intervened ; and a mile 
or two down lay the valley, the shining Ausable, and 
the peaceful farm-houses. That way also her hered- 
itary enemies were. Not a merciful heart in all that 
lovely valley. She hesitated ; it was only for an in- 
stant. She must cross the Slidebrook Valley if possi- 
ble, and gain the mountain opposite. She bounded 
on ; she stopped. What was that ? From the valley 
ahead came the cry of a searching hound. All the 
devils were loose this morning. Every way was 
closed but one, and that led straight down the moun- 
tain to the cluster of houses. Conspicuous among 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 15 

them was a slender white wooden spire. The doe did 
not know it was the spire of a Christian chapel, but 
perhaps she thought that human pity dwelt there, and 
would be more merciful than the teeth of the hounds. 

" The hounds are baying on my track : 
O white man ! will you send me back ? " 

In a panic, frightened animals will always flee to 
human-kind from the danger of more savage foes. 
They always make a mistake in doing so. Perhaps 
the trait is the survival of an era of peace on earth ; 
perhaps it is a prophecy of the golden age of the 
future. The business of this age is murder, — the 
slaughter of animals, the slaughter of fellow-men, by 
the wholesale. Hilarious poets who never fired a gun 
write hunting songs, — Ti-ra-la : and good bishops 
write war-songs, — Ave the Czar ! 

The hunted doe went down " the open," clearing 
the fences splendidly, flying along the stony path. It 
was a beautiful sight. But consider what a shot 
it was ! If the deer, now, could only have been 
caught ! No doubt there were tender-hearted people 
in the valley who would have spared her life, shut her 
up in a stable, and petted her. Was there one who 
would have let her go back to her waiting fawn ? It 
is the business of civilization to tame, or kill. 

The doe went on ; she left the saw-mill on John's 
Brook to her right ; she turned into a wood-path. Ae 
she approached Slide Brook, she saw a boy standing 
by a tree with a raised rifle. The dogs were not in 
sight, but she could hear them coming down the hill. 
There was no time for hesitation. With a tremendous 
burst of speed she cleared the stream, and, as she 
touched the bank, heard the " ping " of a rifle bullet 
in the air above her. The cruel sound gave wings to 



16 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 

the poor thing. In a moment more she was in the 
opening : she leaped into the travelled road. Which 
way ? Below her in the wood was a load of hay : a 
man and a boy, with pitchforks in their hands, were 
running towards her. She turned south, and flew 
along the street. The town was up. Women and 
children ran to the doors and windows ; men snatched 
their rifles ; shots were fired ; at the big boarding* 
houses, the summer boarders, who never have any- 
thing to do oame out and cheered ; a camp-stool was 
thrown from a veranda. Some young fellows shoot- 
ing at a mark in the meadow saw the flying deer, and 
popped away at her : but they were accustomed to a 
mark that stood still. It was all so sudden ! There 
were twenty people who were just going to shoot her ; 
when the doe leaped the road fence, and went away 
across a marsh towards the foot-hills. It was a fear- 
ful gauntlet to run. But nobody except the deer con- 
sidered it in that light. Everybody told what he was 
just going to do! everybody who had seen the per- 
formance was a kind of hero, — everybody except the 
deer. For days and days it was the subject of con- 
versation ; and the summer boarders kept their guns 
at hand, expecting another deer would come to be 
shot at. 

The doe went away to the foot-hills, going now 
slower, and evidently fatigued, if not frightened half 
to death. Nothing is so appalling to a recluse as a 
half a mile of summer boarders. As the deer entered 
the thin woods she saw a rabble of people start across 
the meadow in pursuit. By this time, the dogs, pant- 
ing and lolling out their tongues, came swinging along, 
keeping the trail, like stupids, and consequent!} 7 los- 
ing ground when the deer doubled. But, when the 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 17 

floe had got into the timber, she heard the savage 
brutes howling across the meadow. (It is well 
enough, perhaps, to say that nobody offered to shoot 
the dogs.) 

The courage of the panting fugitive was not gone ; 
she was game to the tip of her high-bred ears. But 
the fearful pace at which she had just been going told 
on her. Her legs trembled, and her heart beat like a 
trip-hammer. She slowed her speed perforce, but still 
fled industriously up the right bank of the stream. 
When she had gone a couple of miles, and the dogs 
were evidently gaining again, she crossed the broad, 
deep brook, climbed the steep, left bank, and fled on 
in the direction of the Mount Marcy trail. The ford- 
ing of the river threw the hounds off for a time. She 
knew, by their uncertain yelping up and down the op- 
posite bank, that she had a little respite : she used it, 
however, to push on until the baying was faint in her 
ears; and then she dropped, exhausted, upon the 
ground. 

This rest, brief as it was, saved her life. Boused 
again by the baying pack, she leaped forward with 
better speed, though without that keen feeling of ex- 
hilarating flight that she had in the morning. It was 
still a race for life ; but the odds were in her favor, 
she thought. She did not appreciate the dogged 
persistence of the hounds, nor had any inspiration 
told her that the race is not to the swift. She was a 
little confused in her mind where to go ; but an in- 
stinct kept her course to the left, and consequently far- 
ther away from her fawn. Going now slower, and now 
faster, as the pursuit seemed more distant or nearer, 
she kept to the south-west, crossed the stream again, 
left Panther Gorge on her right, and ran on by Hay* 



18 A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 

stack and Skylight in the direction of the Upper 
Ausable Pond. I do not know her exact course 
through this maze of mountaius, swamps, ravines, and 
frightful wildernesses. I only know that the poor 
thing worked her way along painfully, with sinking 
heart and unsteady limbs, lying down " dead-beat " at 
intervals, and then spurred on by the cry of the re- 
morseless dogs, until, late in the afternoon she stag- 
gered down the shoulder of Bartlett, and stood upon 
the shore of the lake. If she could put that piece of 
water between her and her pursuers, she would be 
safe. Had she strength to swim it ? 

At her first step into the water she saw a sight that 
sent her back with a bound. There was a boat mid- 
lake ; two men were in it. One was ixwing : the other 
had a gun in his hand. They were looking towards 
her : they had seen her. (She did not know that they 
had heard the baying of hounds on the mountains, 
and had been lying in wait for her an hour.) What 
should she do ? The hounds were drawing near. 
No escape that way, even if she could still run. 
With only a moment's hesitation she plunged into the 
lake, and struck obliquely across. Her tired legs 
could not propel the tired body rapidly. She saw the 
boat headed for her. She turned towards the centre 
of the lake. The boat turned. She could hear the 
rattle of the oar-locks. It was gaining on her. Then 
there was a silence. Then there was a splash of the 
water just ahead of her, followed by a roar round the 
lake, the words " Confound it all ! " and a rattle of 
the oars again. The doe saw the boat nearing her. 
She turned irresolutely to the shore whence she came: 
the dogs were lapping the water, and howling there 
She turned again to the centre of the lake. 



A-HUNTING OF THE DEER. 19 

The brave, pretty creature was quite exhausted now. 
In a moment more, with a rush of water, the boat was 
on her, and the man at the oars had leaned over and 
caught her by the tail. 

" Knock her on the head with that paddle ! " he 
shouted to the gentleman in the stern. 

The gentleman was a gentleman, with a kind, 
smooth-shaven face, and might have been a minister 
of some sort of everlasting gospel. He took the pad- 
dle in bis hand. Just then the doe turned her head, 
and looked at him with her great, appealing eyes. 

" I can't do it ! my soul, I can't do it ! " and he 
dropped the paddle. " Oh, let her go ! " 

" Let thunder go ! " was the only response of the 
guide as he slung the deer round, whipped out his 
hunting-knife, and made a pass that severed her jug- 
ular. 

And the gentleman ate that night of the venison. 

The buck returned about the middle of the after- 
noon. The fawn was bleating piteously, hungry and 
lonesome. The buck was surprised. He looked about 
in the forest. He took a circuit and came back. His 
doe was nowhere to be seen. He looked down at the 
fawn in a helpless sort of way. The fawn appealed 
for his supper. The buck had nothing whatever to 
give his child, — nothing but his sympathy. If he 
said anything, this is what he said : " I 'm the head of 
this family ; but, really, this is a novel case. I 've 
nothing whatever for you. I don't know what to do. 
I 've the feelings of a father ; but you can't live on 
them. Let us travel." 

The buck walked away : the little one toddled aftel 
him. They disappeared in the forest. 



HOW I KILLED A BEAR. 



So many conflicting accounts have appeared about 
my casual encounter with an Adirondack bear last 
summer, that in justice to the public, to myself, and 
to the bear, it is necessary to make a plain statement 
of the facts. Besides, it is so seldom I have occasion 
to kill a bear, that the celebration of the exploit may 
be excused. 

The encounter was unpremeditated on both sides. 
I was not hunting for a bear, and I have no reason to 
suppose that a bear was looking for me. The fact is. 
that we were both out blackberrying, and met by 
chance, — the usual way. There is among the Adiron- 
dack visitors always a great deal of conversation about 
bears, — a general expression of the wish to see one 
in the woods, and much speculation as to how a person 
would act if he or she chanced to meet one. But 
bears are scarce and timid, and appear only to a 
favored few. 

It was a warm day in August, just the sort of day 
when an adventure of any kind seemed impossible. 
But it occurred to the housekeepers at our cottage — 
there were four of them — to send me to the clearing, 
on the mountain back of the house, to pick blackber- 
ries. It was rather a series of small clearings, run. 
ning up into the forest, much overgrown with bushes 
and briers, and not unromantic. Cows pastured there, 






HOW I KILLED A BEAR. 21 

penetrating through the leafy passages from one open- 
ing to another, and browsing among the bushes. I 
was kindly furnished with a six-quart pail, and told 
not to be gone long. 

Not from any predatory instinct, but to save appear- 
ances, I took a gun. It adds to the manly aspect of a 
person with a tin pail if he also carries a gun. It was 
possible I might start up a partridge ; though how I 
was to hit him, if he started up instead of standing 
still, puzzled me. Many people use a shot-gun for 
partridges. I prefer the rifle : it makes a clean job 
of death, and does not prematurely stuff the bird with 
globules of lead. The rifle was a Sharp's, carrying a 
ball cartridge (ten to the pound), — an excellent wea- 
pon belonging to a friend of mine, who had intended, 
for a good many years back, to kill a deer with it. He 
could hit a tree with it — if the wind did not blow, 
and the atmosphere was just right, and the tree was 
not too far off — nearly every time. Of course, the 
tree must have some size. Needless to say that I was 
at that time no sportsman. Years ago I killed a robin 
under the most humiliating circumstances. The bird 
was in a low cherry-tree. I loaded a big shot-gun 
pretty full, crept up under the tree, rested the gun on 
the fence, with the muzzle more than ten feet from 
the bird, shut both eyes, and pulled the trigger. 
When I got up to see what had happened, the robin 
was scattered about under the tree in more than a 
thousand pieces, no one of which was big enough to 
enable a naturalist to decide from it to what species it 
belonged. This disgusted me with the life of a sports- 
man. I mention the incident to show, that, although 
I went blackberrying armed, there was not much in* 
equality between me and the bear. 



22 HOW I KILLED A BEAR. 

In this blackberry-patch bears had been seen. The 
summer before, our colored cook, accompanied by a 
little girl of the vicinage, was picking berries there 
one day, when a bear came out of the woods, and 
walked towards them. The girl took to her heels, and 
escaped. Aunt Chloe was paralyzed with terror. In- 
stead of attempting to run, she sat down on the 
ground where she was standing, and began to weep 
and scream, giving herself up for lost. The bear was 
bewildered by this conduct. He approached and 
looked at her ; he walked around and surveyed her. 
Probably he had never seen a colored person before, 
and did not know whether she would agree with him : 
at any rate, after watching her a few moments, he 
turned about, and went into the forest. This Is an 
authentic instance of the delicate consideration of a 
bear, and is much more remarkable than the forbear- 
ance towards the African slave of the well-known lion, 
because the bear had no thorn in his foot. 

When I had climbed the hill, I set up my rifle 
against a tree, and began picking berries, lured on 
from bush to bush by the black gleam of fruit (that 
always promises more in the distance than it realizes 
when you reach it) ; penetrating farther and farther, 
through leaf-shaded cow-paths flecked with sunlight, 
into clearing after clearing. I could hear on all sides 
the tinkle of bells, the cracking of sticks, and the 
stamping of cattle that were taking refuge in the 
thicket from the flies. Occasionally, as I broke 
through a covert, I encountered a meek cow, who 
stared at me stupidly for a second, and then shambled 
off into the brush. I became accustomed to this dumb 
society, and picked on in silence, attributing all the 
Wood noises to the cattle, thinking nothing of any 



HOW 1 KILLED A BEAR. 23 

real bear. In point of fact, however, I was thinking 
all the time of a nice romantic bear, and, as I picked, 
was composing a story about a generous she-bear who 
had lost her cub, and who seized a small girl in this 
very wood, carried her tenderly off to a cave, and 
brought her up on bear's milk and honey. When the 
girl got big enough to run away, moved by her in- 
herited instincts, she escaped, and came into the valley 
to her father's house (this part of the story was to be 
worked out, so that the child would know her father 
by some family resemblance, and have some language 
in which to address him), and told him where the bear 
lived. The father took his gun, and, guided by the 
unfeeling daughter, went into the woods and shot the 
bear, who never made any resistance, and only, when 
dying, turned reproachful eyes upon her murderer. 
The moral of the tale was to be kindness to animals. 

I was in the midst of this tale, when I happened to 
look some rods away to the other edge of the clearing, 
and there was a bear ! He was standing on his hind- 
legs, and doing just what I was doing, — picking 
blackberries. With one paw he bent down the bush, 
while with the other he clawed the berries into his 
mouth, — green ones and all. To say that I was as- 
tonished is inside the mark. I suddenly discovered 
that I didn't want to see a bear, after all. At about 
the same moment the bear saw me, stopped eating 
berries, and regarded me with a glad surprise. It is 
all very well to imagine what you would do under such 
circumstances. Probably you would n't do it : I did n't. 
The bear dropped down on his fore-feet, and came 
slowly towards me. Climbing a tree was of no use, 
with so good a climber in the rear. If I started to 
run, I had no doubt the bear would give chase ; and 



24 HOW 1 KILLED A BEAR. 

although a bear cannot run down hill , as fast as he 
can run up hill, yet I felt that he could get over this 
rough, brush-tangled ground faster than I could. 

The bear was approaching. It suddenly occurred 
to me how I could divert his mind until I could fall 
back upon my military base. My pail was nearly full 
of excellent berries, — much better than the bear 
could pick himself. I put the pail on the ground, and 
slowly backed away from it, keeping my eye, as beast- 
tamers do, on the bear. The ruse succeeded. 

The bear came up to the berries, and stopped. Not 
accustomed to eat out of a pail, he tipped it over, and 
nosed about in the fruit, " gorming " (if there is such 
a word) it down, mixed with leaves and dirt, like a 
pig. The bear is a worse feeder than the pig. When- 
ever he disturbs a maple-sugar camp in the spring, he 
always upsets the buckets of sirup, and tramples 
round in the sticky sweets, wasting more than he eats. 
The bear's manners are thoroughly disagreeable. 

As soon as my enemy's head was down, I started 
and ran. Somewhat out of breath, and shaky, I 
reached my faithful rifle. It was not a moment too 
soon. I heard the bear crashing through the brush 
after me. Enraged at my duplicity, he was now com- 
ing on with blood in his eye. I felt that the time of 
one of us was probably short. The rapidity of thought 
at such moments of peril is well known. I thought 
an octavo volume, had it illustrated and published, sold 
fifty thousand copies, and went to Europe on the pro- 
ceeds, while that bear was loping across the clearing. 
As I was cocking the gun, I made a hasty and unsatis- 
factory review of my whole life. I noted that, even in 
such a compulsory review, it is almost impossible to 
think of any good thing you have done. The sina 



HOW I KILLED A BEAR. 25 

come out uncommonly strong. I recollected a news- 
paper subscription I had delayed paying years and 
years ago, until both editor and newspaper were dead, 
and which now never could be paid to all eternity. 

The bear was coming on. 

I tried to remember what I had read about encoun 
ters with bears. I could n't recall an instance in 
which a man had run away from a bear in the woods 
and escaped, although I recalled plenty where the bear 
had run from the man and got off. I tried to think 
what is the best way to kill a bear with a gun, when you 
are not near enough to club him with the stock. My 
first thought was to fire at his head ; to plant the ball 
between his eyes ; but this is a dangerous experiment. 
The bear's brain is very small ; and unless you hit 
that, the bear does not mind a bullet in his head ; that 
is, not at the time. I remembered that the instant 
death of the bear would follow a bullet planted just 
back of his fore-leg, and sent into his heart. This 
spot is also difficult to reach, unless the bear stands 
off, side towards you, like a target. I finally deter- 
mined to fire at him generally. 

The bear was coming on. 

The contest seemed to me very different from any- 
thing at Creedmoor. I had carefully read the reports 
of the shooting there ; but it was not easy to apply 
the experience I had thus acquired. I hesitated 
whether I had better fire lying on my stomach ; or 
lying on my back, and resting the gun on my toes. 
But in neither position, I reflected, could I see the 
bear until he was upon me. The range was too short ; 
and the bear would n't wait for me to examine the 
thermometer, and note the direction of the wind. 
Trial of the Creedmoor method, therefore, had to be 



26 HOW I KILLED A BEAR. 

abandoned ; and I bitterly regretted that I had not 
read more accounts of offhand shooting. 

For the bear was coming on. 

I tried to fix my last thoughts upon my family. As 
my family is small, this was not difficult. Dread of 
displeasing my wife, or hurting her feelings, was up- 
permost in my mind. What would be her anxiety as 
hour after hour passed on, and I did not return ! 
What would the rest of the household think as the 
afternoon passed, and no blackberries came ! What 
would be my wife's mortification when the news was 
brought that her husband had been eaten by a bear ! 
I cannot imagine any thing more ignominious than to 
have a husband eaten by a bear. And this was not 
my only anxiety. The mind at such times is not 
under control. With the gravest fears the most whim- 
sical ideas will occur. I looked beyond the mourning 
friends, and thought what kind of an epitaph they 
would be compelled to put upon the stone. Some- 
thing like this : — 

HERE LIE THE REMAINS 
OF 



EATEN BY A BEAR 

Aug. 20, 1877. 

It is a very unheroic and even disagreeable epitaph. 
That " eaten by a bear " is intolerable. It is gro- 
tesque. And then I thought what an inadequate lan- 
guage the English is for compact expression. It would 
not answer to put upon the stone simply " eaten ; " for 
that is indefinite, and requires explanation : it might 
mean eaten by a cannibal. This difficulty could not 
occur in the German, where essen signifies the act oi 



HOW I KILLED A BEAR. 27 

feeding by a man, and fressen by a beast. How sim- 
ple the thing would be in German ! — 

HIER LIEGT 

HOCHWOHLGEBOREN 

HKRR " ' . 



GEFRESSEN 

Aug. 20, 1877. 

That explains itself. The well-born one was eaten 
by a beast, and presumably by a bear, — an animal 
that has a bad reputation since the days of Elisha. 

The bear was coming on ; he had, in fact, come on. 
I judged that he could see the whites of my eyes. All 
my subsequent reflections were confused. I raised 
the gun, covered the bear's breast with the sight, and 
let drive. Then I turned, and ran like a deer. I 
did not hear the bear pursuing. I looked back. The 
bear had stopped. He was lying down. I then re- 
membered that the best thing to do after having fired 
your gun is to reload it. I slipped in a charge, keep- 
ing my eyes on the bear. He never stirred. I walked 
back suspiciously. There was a quiver in the hind- 
legs, but no other motion. Still he might be sham- 
ming : bears often sham. To make sure, I approached, 
and put a ball into his head. He did n't mind it now : 
he minded nothing. Death had come to him with 
a merciful suddenness. He was calm in death. In 
order that he might remain so, I blew his brains out, 
and then started for home. I had killed a bear ! 

Notwithstanding my excitement, I managed to 
saunter into the house with an unconcerned air. There 
was a chorus of voices : — 

" Where are your blackberries ? " 



28 HOW I KILLED A BEAR. 

" Why were you gone so long ? " 

'* Where 's your pail ? " 

" I left the pail." 

" Left the pail ! What for ? " 

"A bear wanted it." 

M Oh, nonsense ! " 

" Well, the last I saw of it, a bear had it." 

" Oh, come ! You did n't really see a bear ? " 

" Yes, but I did really see a real bear." 

"Did he run?" 

"Yes ; he ran after me." 

" I don't believe a word of it. What did you do ? " 

" Oh ! nothing particular — except kill the bear." 

Cries of " Gammon ! " " Don't believe it ! " 
** Where 's the bear ? " 

" If you want to see the bear, you must go up into 
the woods. I could n't bring him down alone." 

Having satisfied the household that something ex- 
traordinary had occurred, and excited the posthumous 
fear of some of them for my own safety, I went down 
into the valley to get help. The great bear-hunter, 
who keeps one of the summer boarding-houses, re- 
ceived my story with a smile of incredulity ; and the 
incredulity spread to the other inhabitants and to the 
boarders as soon as the story was known. However, 
as I insisted in all soberness, and offered to lead them 
to the bear, a party of forty or fifty people at last 
started off with me to bring the bear in. Nobody be- 
lieved there was any bear in the case ; but everybody 
who could get a gun carried one ; and we went into 
the woods armed with guns, pistols, pitchforks, and 
sticks, against all contingencies or surprises, — a crowd 
made up mostly of scoffers and jeerers. 

But when I led the way to the fata] spot, and 



HOW I KILLED A BEAR. 29 

pointed out the bear, lying- peacefully wrapped in his 
own skin, something- like terror seized the boarders, 
and genuine excitement the natives. It was a no- 
mistake bear, by George ! and the hero of the fight — ■ 
well, I will not insist upon that. But what a proces- 
sion that was, carrying the bear home ! and what a 
congregation was speedily gathered in the valley to 
see the bear ! Our best preacher up there never drew 
anything like it on Sunday. 

And I must say that my particular friends, who 
were sportsmen, behaved very well, on the whole. 
They did n't deny that it was a bear, although they 
said it was small for a bear. Mr. Deane, who is 
equally good with a rifle and a rod, admitted that it 
was a very fair shot. He is probably the best salmon- 
fisher in the United States, and he is an equally good 
hunter. I suppose there is no person in America who 
is more desirous to kill a moose than he. But he 
needlessly remarked, after he had examined the wound 
in the bear, that he had seen that kind of a shot made 
by a cow's horn. 

This sort of talk affected me not. When I went to 
sleep that night, my last delicious thought was, " I ? ve 
killed a bear ! " 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 



It ought to be said, by way of explanation, that my 
being lost in the woods was not premeditated. Noth- 
ing could have been more informal. This apology 
can be necessary only to those who are familiar with 
the Adirondack literature. Any person not familiar 
with it would see the absurdity of one going to the 
Northern Wilderness with the deliberate purpose of 
writing about himself as a lost man. It may be 
true that a book about this wild tract would not be 
recognized as complete without a lost-man story in it ; 
since it is almost as easy for a stranger to get lost in 
the Adirondacks as in Boston. I merely desire to 
say that my unimportant adventure is not narrated in 
answer to the popular demand, and I do not wish to 
be held responsible for its variation from the typical 
character of such experiences. 

We had been in camp a week, on the Upper Au- 
sable Lake. This is a gem — emerald or turquoise as 
the light changes it — set in the virgin forest. It is 
not a large body of water, is irregular in form, and 
about a mile and a half in length ; but in the sweep 
of its wooded shores, and the lovely contour of the 
lofty mountains that guard it, the lake is probably the 
most charming in America. Why the young ladies 
and gentlemen who camp there occasionally vex the 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 31 

days and nights with hooting 1 , and singing sentimental 
songs, is a mystery even to the laughing loon. 

I left my companions there one Saturday morning 
to return to Keene Valley, intending to fish down the 
Ausable River. The Upper Lake discharges itself 
into the Lower by a brook which winds through a 
mile and a half of swamp and woods. Out of the north 
end of the Lower Lake, which is a huge sink in the 
mountains, and mirrors the savage precipices, the 
Ausable breaks its rocky barriers, and flows through a 
wild gorge, several miles, to the valley below. Be- 
tween the Lower Lake and the settlements is an ex- 
tensive forest, traversed by a cart-path, admirably 
constructed of loose stones, roots of trees, decayed 
logs, slippery rocks, and mud. The gorge of the river 
forms its western boundary. I followed this carica- 
ture of a road a mile or more ; then gave my luggage 
to the guide to carry home, and struck off through 
the forest, by compass, to the river. I promised my- 
self an exciting scramble down this little-frequented 
canon, and a creel full of trout. There was no diffi- 
culty in finding the river, or in descending the steep 
precipice to its bed : getting into a scrape is usually 
the easiest part of it. The river is strewn with bowl- 
ders, oig and little, through which the amber water 
rushes with an unceasing thunderous roar, now plung- 
ing down in white falls, then swirling roun$ in dark 
pools. The day, already past meridian, was delight- 
ful ; at least, the blue strip of it I could see overhead. 

Better pools and rapids for trout never were, I 
thought, as I concealed myself behind a bowlder, and 
made the first cast. There is nothing like the thrill 
of expectation over the first throw in unfamiliar 
waters. Fishing is like gambling, in that failure only 



32 LOST IN THE WOODS. 

excites hope of a fortunate throw next time. There 
was no rise to the "leader " on the first cast, nor on 
the twenty-first; and I cautiously worked my way 
down stream, throwing right and left. When I had 
gone half a mile, my opinion of the character of the 
pools was unchanged : never were there such places 
for trout ; but the trout were out of their places. 
Perhaps they did n't care for the fly : some trout seem 
to be so unsophisticated as to prefer the worm. I 
replaced the fly with a baited hook : the worm 
squirmed ; the waters rushed and roared ; a cloud 
sailed across the blue : no trout rose to the lonesome 
opportunity. There is a certain companionship in the 
presence of trout, especially when you can feel them 
flopping in your fish-basket ; but it became evident 
that there were no trout in this wilderness, and a 
sense of isolation for the first time came over me. 
There was no living thing near. The river had by 
this time entered a deeper gorge ; walls of rocks rose 
perpendicularly on either side, — picturesque rocks, 
painted many colors by the oxide of iron. It was not 
possible to climb out of the gorge ; it was impossible 
to find a way by the side of the river ; and getting 
down the bed, over the falls, and through the flumes, 
was not easy, and consumed time. 

Was that thunder ? Very likely. But thunder- 
showers are always brewing in these mountain-for- 
tresses, and it did not occur to me that there was any 
thing personal in it. Very soon, however, the hole 
in the sky closed in, and the rain dashed down. It 
seemed a providential time to eat my luncheon ; and 
I took shelter under a scraggy pine that had rooted 
itself in the edge of the rocky slope. The shower 
soon passed, and I continued my journey, creeping 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 33 

over the slippery rocks, and continuing to show my 
confidence in the unresponsive trout. The way grew 
wider and more grewsome. The thunder began again, 
rolling along over the tops of the mountains, and re- 
verberating in sharp concussions in the gorge : the 
lightning also darted down into the darkening pas- 
sage, and then the rain. Every enlightened being, 
even if he is in a fisherman's dress of shirt and pan- 
taloons, hates to get wet ; and I ignominiously crept 
under the edge of a sloping bowlder. It was all very 
well at first, until streams of water began to crawl 
along the face of the rock, and trickle down the back 
of my neck. This was refined misery, unheroic and 
humiliating, as suffering always is when unaccom- 
panied by resignation. 

A longer time than I knew was consumed in this 
and repeated efforts to wait for the slackening and 
renewing storm to pass away. In the intervals of 
calm I still fished, and even descended to what a 
sportsman considers incredible baseness ; I put a 
" sinker " on my line. It is the practice of the coun- 
try-folk, whose only object is to get fish, to use a good 
deal of bait, sink the hook to the bottom of the pools, 
and wait the slow appetite of the summer trout. I 
tried this also. I might as well have fished in a pork- 
barrel. It is true, that, in one deep, black, round 
pool, I lured a small trout from the bottom, and de- 
posited him in the creel; but it was an accident. 
Though I sat there in the awful silence (the roar of 
water only emphasized the stillness) full half an hour, 
I was not encouraged by another nibble. Hope, how* 
ever, did not die : I always expected to find the trout 
in the next flume ; and so I toiled slowly on, uncon= 
scious of the passing time. At each turn of the 



34 LOST IN THE WOODS. 

stream I expected to see the end, and at each turn 1 
saw a long, narrow stretch of rocks and foaming 
water. Climbing out of the ravine was, in most 
places, simply impossible ; and I began to look with 
interest for a slide, where bushes rooted in the scant 
earth would enable me to scale the precipice. I did 
not doubt that I was nearly through the gorge. I 
could at length see the huge form of the Giant of the 
Valley, scarred with avalanches, at the end of the 
vista ; and it seemed not far off. But it kept its dis- 
tance, as only a mountain can, while I stumbled and 
slid down the rocky way. The rain had now set in 
with persistence, and suddenly I became aware that it 
was growing dark, and I said to myself, " If you don't 
wish to spend the night in this horrible chasm, you 'd 
better escape speedily." Fortunately I reached a 
place where the face of the precipice was bush-grown, 
and with considerable labor scrambled up it. 

Having no doubt that I was within half a mile, 
perhaps within a few rods, of the house above the 
entrance of the gorge, and that, in any event, I should 
fall into the cart-path in a few minutes, I struck 
boldly into the forest, congratulating myself on 
having escaped out of the river. So sure was I of 
my whereabouts, that I did not note the bend of the 
river, nor look at my compass. The one trout in my 
basket was no burden, and I stepped lightly out. 

The forest was of hard-wood, and open, except for 
a thick undergrowth of moose-bush. It was raining, 
- — in fact, it had been raining, more or less, for a 
month, — and the woods were soaked. This moose* 
bush is most annoying stuff to travel through in a 
rain ; for the broad leaves slap one in the face, and 
sop him with wet. The way grew every moment 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 35 

more dingy. The heavy clouds above the thick foliage 
brought night on prematurely. It was decidedly 
premature to a near-sighted man, whose glasses the 
rain rendered useless : such a person ought to be at 
home early. On leaving the river-bank I had borne 
to the left, so as to be sure to strike either the clear- 
ing or the road, and not wander off into the measure- 
less forest. I confidently pursued this course, and 
went gayly on by the left flank. That I did not 
oome to any opening or path, only showed that I had 
slightly mistaken the distance : I was going in the 
right direction. 

I was so certain of this, that I quickened my pace, 
and got up with alacrity every time I tumbled down 
amid the slippery leaves and catching roots, and 
hurried on. And I kept to the left. It even occurred 
to me that I was turning to the left so much, that I 
might come back to the river again. It grew more 
dusky, and rained more violently ; but there was 
nothing alarming in the situation, since I knew exactly 
where I was. It was a little mortifying that I had 
miscalculated the distance : yet, so far was I from 
feeling any uneasiness about this, that I quickened my 
pace again, and, before I knew it, was in a full run ; 
that is, as full a run as a person can indulge in in the 
dusk, with so many trees in the way. No nervousness, 
but simply a reasonable desire to get there. I desired 
to look upon myself as the person " not lost, but gone 
before." As time passed, and darkness fell, and no 
clearing or road appeared, I ran a little faster. It 
did n't seem possible that the people had moved, or 
the road been changed ; and yet I was sure of my 
direction. I went on with an energy increased by the 
ridiculousness of the situation, the danger that an 



36 LOST IN THE WOODS. 

experienced woodsman was in of getting home late 
for supper ; the lateness of the meal being nothing to 
the gibes of the unlost. How long I kept this course, 
and how far I went on, I do not know ; but suddenly 
I stumbled against an ill-placed tree, and sat down on 
the soaked ground, a trifle out of breath. It then 
occurred to me that I had better verify my course by 
the compass. There was scarcely light enough to dis- 
tinguish the black end of the needle. To my amaze- 
ment, the compass, which was made near Greenwich, 
was wrong. Allowing for the natural variation of the 
needle, it was absurdly wrong. It made out that I 
was going south when I was going north. It inti- 
mated, that, instead of turning to the left, I had been 
making a circuit to the right. According to the com- 
pass, the Lord only knew where I was. 

The inclination of persons in the woods to travel in 
a circle is unexplained. I suppose it arises from the 
sympathy of the legs with the brain. Most people 
reason in a circle : their minds go round and round, 
always in the same track. For the last half-hour I 
had been saying over a sentence that started itself : 
" I wonder where that road is ! " I had said it over 
till it had lost all meaning. I kept going round on it ; 
and yet I could not believe that my body had been 
travelling in a circle. Not being able to recognize 
any tracks, I have no evidence that I had so travelled, 
except the general testimony of lost men. 

The compass annoyed me. I 've known experi- 
enced guides utterly discredit it. It could n't be that 
I was to turn about, and go the way I had come. 
Nevertheless, I said to myself, " You 'd better keep 
a cool head, my boy, or you are in for a night of 
it. Better listen to science than to spunk." And I 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 37 

resolved to heed the impartial needle. I was a little 
weary of the rough tramping : but it was necessary to 
be moving ; for, with wet clothes and the night air, 
I was decidedly chilly. I turned towards the north, 
and slipped and stumbled along. A more uninviting 
forest to pass the night in I never saw. Everything 
was soaked. If I became exhausted, it would be 
necessary to build a fire ; and, as I walked on, I 
could n't find a dry bit of wood. Even if a little punk 
were discovered in a rotten log, I had no hatchet to 
cut fuel. I thought it all over calmly. I had the 
usual three matches in my pocket. I knew exactly 
what would happen if I tried to build a fire. The 
first match would prove to be wet. The second match, 
when struck, would shine and smell, and fizz a little 
and then go out. There would be only one match 
left. Death would ensue if it failed. I should get 
close to the log, crawl under my hat, strike the match, 
see it catch, flicker, almost go out (the reader pain- 
fully excited by this time), blaze up, nearly expire, 
and finally fire the punk, — thank God ! And I said 
to myself, " The public don't want any more of this 
thing : it is played out. Either have a box of matches, 
or let the first one catch fire." 

In this gloomy mood I plunged along. The pros- 
pect was cheerless ; for, apart from the comfort that 
a fire would give, it is necessary, at night, to keep off 
the wild beasts. I fancied I could hear the tread of 
the stealthy brutes following their prey. But there 
Was one source of profound satisfaction, — the cata- 
mount had been killed. Mr. Colvin, the triangulating 
surveyor of the Adirondacks, killed him in his last 
official report to the State. Whether he despatched 
him with a theodolite or a barometer does not matter f 



38 LOST IN THE WOODS. 

he is officially dead, and none of the travellers can 
kill him any more. Yet he has served them a good 
turn. 

I knew that catamount well. One night when we 
lay in the bogs of the South Beaver Meadow, under a 
canopy of mosquitoes, the serene midnight was parted 
by a wild and human-like cry from a neighboring 
mountain. " That 's a cat," said the guide. I felt in 
a moment that it was the voice of " modern cultchah." 
" Modern culture," says Mr. Joseph Cook in a most 
impressive period, — " modern culture is a child cry- 
ing in the wilderness, and with no voice but a cry." 
That describes the catamount exactly. The next day, 
when we ascended the mountain, we came upon the 
traces of this brute, — a spot where he had stood and 
cried in the night ; and I confess that my hair rose 
with the consciousness of his recent presence, as it is 
said to do when a spirit passes by. 

Whatever consolation the absence of catamount in 
a dark, drenched, and howling wilderness can impart, 
that I experienced ; but I thought what a satire upon 
my present condition was modern culture, with its 
plain thinking and high living ! It was impossible to 
get much satisfaction out of the real and the ideal, — 
the me and the not-me. At this time what impressed 
me most was the absurdity of my position looked at in 
the light of modern civilization and all my advantages 
and acquirements. It seemed pitiful that societj?' 
could do absolutely nothing for me. It was, in fact, 
humiliating to reflect that it would now be profit- 
able to exchange all my possessions for the woods in- 
stinct of the most unlettered guide. I began to doubt 
the value of the " culture " that blunts the natural 
instincts. 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 39 

It began to be a question whether I could hold out 
to walk all night ; for I must travel, or perish. And 
now I imagined that a spectre was walking by my 
side. This was Famine. To be sure, I had only 
recently eaten a hearty luncheon : but the pangs of 
hunger got hold on me when I thought that I should 
have no supper, no breakfast ; and, as the procession 
of unattainable meals stretched before me, I grew 
hungrier and hungrier. I could feel that I was be- 
coming gaunt, and wasting away : already I seemed 
to be emaciated. It is astonishing how speedily a 
jocund, well-conditioned human being can be trans- 
formed into a spectacle of poverty and want. Lose 
a man in the woods, drench him, tear his pantaloons, 
get his imagination running on his lost supper and 
the cheerful fireside that is expecting him, and he will 
become haggard in an hour. I am not dwelling upon 
these things to excite the reader's sympathy, but only 
to advise him, if he contemplates an adventure of this 3 
kind, to provide himself with matches, kindling-wood, 
something more to eat than one raw trout, and not to 
select a rainy night for it. 

Nature is so pitiless, so unresponsive, to a person in 
trouble ! I had read of the soothing companionship 
of the forest, the pleasure of the pathless woods. But 
I thought, as I stumbled along in the dismal actuality, 
that if I ever got out of it I would write a letter to 
the newspapers, exposing the whole thing. There is 
an impassive, stolid brutality about the woods that 
has never been enough insisted on. I tried to keep 
my mind fixed upon the fact of man's superiority to 
Nature ; his ability to dominate and outwit her. My 
situation was an amusing satire on this theory. I 
fancied that I could feel a sneer in the woods at my 



40 LOST IN THE WOODS. 

detected conceit. There was something personal in 
it. The downpour of the rain and the slipperiness of 
the ground were elements of discomfort ; but there 
was, besides these, a kind of terror in the very charac- 
ter of the forest itself. I think this arose not more 
from its immensity than from the kind of stolidity to 
which I have alluded. It seemed to me that it would 
be a sort of relief to kick the trees. I don't wonder 
that the bears fall to, occasionally, and scratch the 
bark off the great pines and maples, tearing it angrily 
away. One must have some vent to his feelings. It 
is a common experience of people lost in the woods to 
lose their heads ; and even the woodsmen themselves 
are not free from this panic when some accident has 
thrown them out of their reckoning. Fright unsettles 
the judgment : the oppressive silence of the woods is 
a vacuum in which the mind goes astray. It 's a 
hollow sham, this pantheism, I said ; being " one with 
Nature " is all humbug : I should like to see some- 
body. Man, to be sure, is of very little account, and 
soon gets beyond his depth ; but the society of the 
least human being is better than this gigantic indiffer- 
ence. The " rapture on the lonely shore " is agree- 
able only when you know you can at any moment go 
home. 

I had now given up all expectation of finding the 
road, and was steering my way as well as I could 
northward towards the valley. In my haste I made 
slow progress. Probably the distance I travelled was 
short, and the time consumed not long ; but I seemed 
to be adding mile to mile, and hour to hour. I had 
time to review the incidents of the Russo-Turkish 
war, and to forecast the entire Eastern question ; I 
outlined the characters of all my companions left in 



LOST IN THE WOODS. 41 

camp, and sketched in a sort of comedy the sym 
pathetic and disparaging observations they would 
make on my adventure ; I repeated something like a 
thousand times, without contradiction, " What a fool 
you were to leave the river ! " I stopped twenty times, 
thinking I heard its loud roar, always deceived by the 
wind in the tree tops ; I began to entertain serious 
doubts about the compass, — when suddenly I became 
aware that I was no longer on level ground ; I was 
descending a slope ; I was actually in a ravine. In a 
moment more I was in a brook newly formed by the 
rain. " Thank Heaven ! " I cried : " this I shall follow 
whatever conscience or the compass says." In this 
region, all streams go, sooner or later, into the val- 
ley. This ravine, this stream, no doubt, led to the 
river. I splashed and tumbled along down it in 
mud and water. Down hill we went together, the fall 
showing that I must have wandered to high ground. 
When I guessed that I must be close to the river, I 
suddenly stepped into mud up to my ankles. It was 
the road, — running, of course, the wrong way, but 
still the blessed road. It was a mere canal of liquid 
mud ; but man had made it, and it would take me 
home. I was at least three miles fiom the point 
where I supposed I was near at sunset, and I had be- 
fore me a toilsome walk of six or seven miles, most of 
the way in a ditch ; but it is truth to say I enjoyed 
every step of it. I was safe ; I knew where I was ; 
and I could have walked till morning. The mind 
had again got the upper hand of the body, and began 
to plume itself on its superiority : it was even disposed 
to doubt whether it had been " lost " at all. 



CAMPING OUT. 



It seems to be agreed that civilization is kept up 
only by a constant effort. Nature claims its own 
speedily when the effort is relaxed. If you clear a 
patch of fertile ground in the forest, uproot the stumps 
and plant it, year after year, in potatoes and maize, 
you say you have subdued it. But if you leave it 
for a season or two, a kind of barbarism seems to steal 
out upon it from the circling woods ; coarse grass and 
brambles cover it ; bushes spring up in a wild tangle ; 
the raspberry and the blackberry flower and fruit, 
and the humorous bear feeds upon them. The last 
state of the ground is worse than the first. 

Perhaps the cleared spot is called Ephesus. 
There is a splendid city on the plain ; there are tem- 
ples and theatres on the hills ; the commerce of the 
world seeks its port ; the luxury of the Orient flows 
through its marble streets. You are there one day 
when the sea has receded : the plain is a pestilent 
marsh ; the temples, the theatres, the lofty gates, have 
sunken and crumbled, and the wild-brier runs over 
them ; and, as you grow pensive in the most desolate 
place in the world, a bandit lounges out of a tomb, 
and offers to relieve you of all that which creates arti- 
ficial distinctions in society. The higher the civil- 
ization has risen, the more abject is the desolation 
of barbarism that ensues. The most melancholy spot 



CAMPING OUT. 43 

hi the Adirondack^ is not a tamarack-swamp, where 
the traveller wades in moss and mire, and the at- 
mosphere is composed of equal active parts of black- 
flies, mosquitos, and midges. It is the village of the 
Adirondack Iron-Works, where the streets of gaunt 
houses are falling to pieces, tenantless; the factory 
wheels have stopped ; the furnaces are in ruins ; the 
iron and wooden machinery is strewn about in help- 
less detachment ; and heaps of charcoal, ore, and slag 
proclaim an arrested industry. Beside this deserted 
village, even Calamity Pond, shallow, sedgy, with its 
ragged shores of stunted firs, and its melancholy shaft 
that marks the spot where the proprietor of the iron- 
works accidentally shot himself, is cheerful. 

The iustinct of barbarism that leads people periodi- 
cally to throw away the habits of civilization, and 
seek the freedom and discomfort of the woods, is ex- 
plicable enough ; but it is not so easy to understand 
why this passion should be strongest in those who 
are most refined, and most trained in intellectual 
and social fastidiousness. Philistinism and shoddy 
do not like the woods, unless it becomes fashionable 
to do so ; and then, as speedily as possible they in- 
troduce their artificial luxuries, and reduce the life in 
the wilderness to the vulgarity of a well-fed picnic. 
It is they who have strewn the Adirondacks with 
paper collars and tin cans. The real enjoyment of 
camping and tramping in the woods lies in a return 
to primitive conditions of lodging, dress, and food, in 
as total an escape as may be from the requirements of 
civilization. And it remains to be explained why this 
is enjoyed most by those who are most highly civilized. 
It is wonderful to see how easily the restraints of so« 
ciety fall off. Of course it is not true that courtesy 



44 CAMPING OUT. 

depends upon clothes with the best people ; but, with 
others, behavior hangs almost entirely upon dress. 
Many good habits are easily got rid of in the woods. 
Doubt sometimes seems to be felt whether Sunday is a 
legal holiday there. It becomes a question of casuistry 
with a clergyman whether he may shoot at a mark on 
Sunday, if none of his congregation are present. He 
intends no harm : he only gratifies a curiosity to see if 
he can hit the mark. Where shall he draw the line ? 
Doubtless he might throw a stone at a chipmunk or 
shout at a loon. Might he fire at a mark with an 
air-gun that makes no noise ? He will not fish or 
hunt on Sunday (although he is no more likely to 
catch anything that day than on any other) ; but 
may he eat trout that the guide has caught on Sun- 
day, if the guide swears he caught them Saturday 
night ? Is there such a thing as a vacation in reli- 
gion ? How much of our virtue do we owe to inher- 
ited habits ? 

I am not at all sure whether this desire to camp 
outside of civilization is creditable to human nature, 
or otherwise. We hear sometimes that the Turk has 
been merely camping for four centuries in Europe. 
I suspect that many of us are, after all, really camp- 
ing temporainly in civilized conditions ; and that 
going into the wilderness is an escape, longed for 9 
into our natural and preferred state. Consider what 
this "camping out" is, that is confessedly so agreeable 
to people most delicately reared. I have no desire 
to exaggerate its delights. 

The Adirondack wilderness is essentially unbroken. 
A few bad roads that penetrate it. a few jolting 
wagons that traverse them, a few barn-like boarding- 
houses on the edge of the forest, where the boarders 



CAMPING OUT. 45 

are soothed by patent coffee, and stimulated to unnat- 
ural gayety by Japan tea, and experimented on by 
unique cookery, do little to destroy the savage fascina- 
tion of the region. In half an hour, at any point, one 
can put himself into solitude and every desirable dis- 
comfort. The party that covets the experience of the 
camp comes down to primitive conditions of dress and 
equipment. There are guides and porters to carry 
the blankets for beds, the raw provisions, and the 
camp equipage ; and the motley party of the tempo- 
rarily decivilized files into the woods, and begins, per- 
haps by a road, perhaps on a trail, its exhilarating and 
weary march. The exhilaration arises partly from 
the casting aside of restraint, partly from the adven- 
ture of exploration ; and the weariness, from the in- 
terminable toil of bad walking, a heavy pack, and the 
grim monotony of trees and bushes, that shut out all 
prospect, except an occasional glimpse of the sky. 
Mountains are painfully climbed, streams forded, 
lonesome lakes paddled over, long and muddy " car- 
ries " traversed. Fancy this party the victim of polit- 
ical exile, banished by the law, and a more sorrowful 
march could not be imagined ; but the voluntary 
hardship becomes pleasure, and it is undeniable that 
the spirits of the party rise as the difficulties increase. 
For this straggling and stumbling band the world is 
young again : it has come to the beginning of things ; 
it has cut loose from tradition, and is free to make a 
home anywhere : the movement has all the promise of 
a revolution. All this virginal freshness invites the 
primitive instincts of play and disorder. The free 
range of the forests suggests endless possibilities of 
exploration and possession. Perhaps we are treading 
where man since the creation never trod before ; per 



46 CAMPING OUT. 

haps the waters of this bubbling spring, which we 
deepen by scraping out the decayed leaves and the 
black earth, have never been tasted before, except by 
the wild denizens of these woods. We cross the trails 
of lurking animals, — paths that heighten our sense 
of seclusion from the world. The hammering of the 
infrequent woodpecker, the call of the lonely bird, the 
drumming of the solitary partridge, — all these sounds 
do but emphasize the lonesomeness of nature. The 
roar of the mountain brook, dashing over its bed of 
pebbles, rising out of the ravine, and spreading, as it 
were, a mist of sound through all the forest (contin- 
uous beating waves that have the rhythm of eternity 
in them), and the fitful movement of the air-tides 
through the balsams and firs and the giant pines, — 
how these grand symphonies shut out the little exas- 
perations of our vexed life ! It seems easy to begin 
life over again on the simplest terms. Probably it is 
not so much the desire of the congregation to escape 
from the preacher, or of the preacher to escape from 
himself, that drives sophisticated people into the wil- 
derness, as it is the unconquered craving for primitive 
simplicity, the revolt against the everlasting dress* 
parade of our civilization. From this monstrous pom- 
posity even the artificial rusticity of a Petit Trianon 1 
is a relief. It was only human nature that the jaded 
Frenchman of the regency should run away to the 
New World, and live in a forest-hut with an Indian 
squaw ; although he found little satisfaction in his act 
of heroism, unless it was talked about at Versailles. 

When our trampers come, late in the afternoon, to 
the bank of a lovely lake where they purpose to enter 
the primitive life, everything is waiting for them in 

1 A little palace near the royal one at Versailles. 



CAMPING OUT. 47' 

virgin expectation. There is a little promontory jut- 
ting- into the lake, and sloping down to a sandy beach, 
on which the waters idly lapse, and shoals of red-fins 
and shiners come to greet the stranger ; the forest is 
untouched by the axe ; the tender green sweeps the 
water's edge ; ranks of slender firs are marshalled by 
the shore ; clumps of white-birch stems shine in satin 
purity among the evergreens ; the boles of giant 
spruces, maples, and oaks, lifting high their crowns of 
foliage, stretch away in" endless galleries and arcades ; 
through the shifting leaves the sunshine falls upon 
the brown earth ; overhead are fragments of blue sky ; 
under the boughs and in chance openings appear the 
bluer lake and the outline of the gracious mountains. 
The discoverers of this paradise, which they have en- 
tered to destroy, note the babbling of the brook that 
flows close at hand ; they hear the splash of the leap- 
ing fish ; they listen to the sweet, metallic song of the 
evening thrush, and the chatter of the red squirrel, 
who angrily challenges their right to be there. But 
the moment of sentiment passes. This party has come 
here to eat and to sleep, and not to encourage Nature 
in her poetic attitudinizing. 

The spot for a shanty is selected. This side shall 
be its opening, towards the lake; and in front of it 
the fire, so that the smoke shall drift into the hut, and 
discourage the mosquitoes ; yonder shall be the cook's 
fire and the path to the spring. The whole colony 
bestir themselves in the foundation of a new home, — 
an enterprise that has all the fascination, and none of 
the danger, of a veritable new settlement in the wil- 
derness. The axes of the guides resound in the echo- 
ing spaces ; great trunks fall with a crash ; vistas are 
opened towards the lake and the mountains. The 



48 CAMPING OUT. 

spot for the shanty is cleared of underbrush; forked 
stakes are driven into the ground, cross-pieces are 
laid on them, and poles sloping back to the ground. 
In an incredible space of time there is the skeleton of 
a house, which is entirely open in front. The roof 
and sides must be covered. For this purpose the 
trunks of great spruces are skinned. The woodman 
rims the bark near the foot of the tree, and again six 
feet above, and slashes it perpendicularly ; then, with 
a blunt stick, he crowds off this thick hide exactly as 
an ox is skinned. It needs but a few of these skins 
to cover the roof ; and they make a perfectly water- 
tight roof, except when it rains. Meantime, busy 
hands have gathered boughs of the spruce and the 
feathery balsam, and shingled the ground underneath 
the shanty for a bed. It is an aromatic bed : in the- 
ory it is elastic and consoling. Upon it are spread 
the blankets. The sleepers, of all sexes and ages, are 
to lie there in a row, their feet to the fire, and their 
heads under the edge of the sloping roof. Nothing 
could be better contrived. The fire is in front : it is 
not a fire, but a conflagration — a vast heap of green 
logs set on fire — of pitch, and split dead-wood, and 
crackling balsams, raging and roaring. By the time 
twilight falls, the cook has prepared supper. Every- 
thing has been cooked in a tin pail and a skillet, — 
potatoes, tea, pork, mutton, slapjacks. You wonder 
how everything could have been prepared in so few 
utensils. When you eat, the wonder ceases : every- 
thing might have been cooked in one pail. It is a 
noble meal ; and nobly is it disposed of by these ama- 
teur savages, sitting about upon logs and roots of 
trees. Never were there such potatoes, never beans 
that seemed to have more of the bean in them, 



CAMPING OUT. 49 

never such curly pork, never trout with more In- 
dian-meal on them, never mutton more distinctly 
sheepy ; and the tea, drunk out of a tin cup, with a 
lump of maple-sugar dissolved in it, — it is the sort 
of tea that takes hold, lifts the hair, and disposes the 
drinker to anecdote and hilariousness. There is no 
deception about it : it tastes of tannin and spruce and 
creosote. Everything, in short, has the flavor of the 
wilderness and a free life. It is idyllic. And yet 3 
with all our sentimentality, there is nothing feeble 
about the cooking. The slapjacks are a solid job of 
work, made to last, and not go to pieces in a per- 
son's stomach like a trivial bun : we might record on 
them, in cuneiform characters, our incipient civiliza- 
tion ; and future generations would doubtless turn 
them up as Acadian bricks. Good, robust victuals 
are what the primitive man wants. 

Darkness falls suddenly. Outside the ring of light 
from our conflagration the woods are black. There 
is a tremendous impression of isolation and lonesome- 
ness in our situation. We are the prisoners of the 
night. The woods never seemed so vast and mysteri- 
ous. The trees are gigantic. There are noises that 
We do not understand, — mysterious winds passing 
overhead, and rambling in the great galleries, tree- 
trunks grinding against each other, undefmable stirs 
and uneasinesses. The shapes of those who pass into 
the dimness are outlined in monstrous proportions. 
The spectres, seated about in the glare of the fire, 
talk about appearances and presentiments and reli- 
gion. The guides cheer the night with bear-fights, 
and catamount encounters, and frozen-to-death expe- 
riences, and simple tales of great prolixity and no 
point, and jokes of primitive lucidity. We hear c»*a~ 



50 CAMPING OUT. 

mounts, and the stealthy tread of things in the leaves, 
and the hooting of owls, and, when the moon rises, 
the laughter of the loon. Everything is strange, 
spectral, fascinating. 

By and by we get our positions in the shanty for 
the night, and arrange the row of sleepers. The 
shanty has become a smoke-house by this time : 
waves of smoke roll into it from the fire. It is only 
by lying down, and getting the head well under the 
eaves, that one can breathe. No one can find her 
" things ; " nobody has a pillow. At length the row 
is laid out, with the solemn protestation of intention 
to sleep. The wind, shifting, drives away the smoke. 
Good-night is said a hundred times ; positions are re- 
adjusted, more last words, new shifting about, final 
remarks ; it is all so comfortable and romantic ; and 
then silence. Silence continues for a minute. The 
fire flashes up ; all the row of heads is lifted up simul- 
taneously to watch it ; showers of sparks sail aloft into 
the blue night ; the vast vault of greenery is a fairy 
spectacle. How the sparks mount and twinkle and 
disappear like tropical fire-flies, and all the leaves 
murmur, and clap their hands ! Some of the sparks 
do not go out : we see them flaming in the sky when 
the flame of the fire has died down. Well, good- 
night, good-night. More folding of the arms to 
sleep ; more grumbling about the hardness of a hand- 
bag, or the insufficiency of a pocket-handkerchief, for 
a pillow. Good-night. Was that a remark ? — 
something about a root, a stub in the ground sticking 
into the back. " You could n't lie along a hair? " — > 
" Well, no : here 's another stub." It needs but a 
moment for the conversation to become general, — > 
about roots under the shoulder, stubs in the back, a 



CAMPING OUT. 51 

ridge on which it is impossible for the sleeper to bal- 
ance, the non-elasticity of boughs, the hardness of the 
ground, the heat, the smoke, the chilly air. Subjects 
of remarks multiply. The whole camp is awake, and 
chattering like an aviary. The owl is also awake; 
but the guides who are asleep outside make more 
noise than the owls. Water is wanted, and is handec. 
about in a dipper. Everybody is yawning; every- 
body is now determined to go to sleep in good ear- 
nest. A last good-night. There is an appalling 
silence. It is interrupted in the most natural way 
in the world. Somebody has got the start, and gone 
to sleep. He proclaims the fact. He seems to have 
been brought up on the seashore, and to know how 
to make all the deep-toned noises of the restless 
ocean. He is also like a war-horse; or, it is sug' 
gested, like a saw-horse. How malignantly he snorts, 
and breaks off short, and at once begins again in an- 
other key ! One head is raised after another. 
• "Who is that?" 

" Somebody punch him." 

" Turn him over." 

" Reason with him." 

The sleeper is turned over. The turn was a mis- 
take. He was before, it appears, on his most agree- 
able side. The camp rises in indignation. The sleeper 
sits up in bewilderment. Before he can go off again, 
two or three others have preceded him. They are all 
alike. You can never judge what a person is whem 
he is awake. There are here half a dozen disturbers 
of the peace who should be put in solitary confine- 
ment. At midnight, when a philosopher crawls out 
to sit on a log by the fire, and smoke a pipe, a duet in 
tenor and mezzo-soprano is going on in the shanty, 



52 CAMPING OUT. 

*vith a chorus always coming in at the wrong times. 
Those who are not asleep want to know why the 
smoker does n't go to bed. He is requested to get 
some water, to throw on another log, to see what time 
it is, to note whether it looks like rain. A buzz of 
conversation arises. She is sure she heard something 
behind the shanty. He says it is all nonsense. " Per- 
haps, however, it might be a mouse." 

" Mercy! Are there mice ? " 

" Plenty." 

" Then that 's what I heard nibbling by my head. I 
sha'n't sleep a wink ! Do they bite ? " 

"No, they nibble; scarcely ever take a full bite 
out." 

"It's horrid!" 

Towards morning it grows chilly ; the guides have 
let the fire go out ; the blankets will slip down. Anx- 
iety begins to be expressed about the dawn. 

" What time does the sun rise ? " 

" Awful early. Did you sleep ? " 

" Not a wink. And you ? " 

" In spots. I 'm going to dig up this root as soon 
as it is light enough." 

" See that mist on the lake, and the light just com- 
ing on the Gothics ! I 'd no idea it was so cold : aC 
the first part of the night I was roasted." 

" What were they talking about all night ? " 

When the party crawls out to the early breakfast, 
®,fter it has washed its faces in the lake, it is disor- 
ganized, but cheerful. Nobody admits much sleep; 
but everybody is refreshed, and declares it delightful. 
It is the fresh air all night that invigorates ; or maybe 
it is the tea or the slapjacks. The guides have erected 
a table of spruce bark, with benches at the sides ; so 



CAMPING OUT. 53 

that breakfast is taken in form. It is served on tin 
plates and oak chips. After breakfast begins the 
dajr's work. It may be a mountain-climbing expedi- 
tion, or rowing and angling in the lake, or fishing for 
trout in some stream two or three miles distant- No- 
body can stir far from camp without a guide. Ham- 
mocks are swung, bowers are built, novel-reading be- 
gins, worsted work appears, cards are shuffled and 
dealt. The day passes in absolute freedom from re- 
sponsibility to one's self. At night, when the expedi- 
tions return, the camp resumes its animation. Adven- 
tures are recounted, every statement of the narrator 
being disputed and argued. Everybody has become 
an adept in wood-craft ; but nobody credits his neigh- 
bor with like instinct. Society getting resolved into 
its elements, confidence is gone. 

Whilst the hilarious party are at supper, a drop or 
two of rain falls. The head guide is appealed to. Is 
it going to rain ? He says it does rain. But will it 
be a rainy night ? The guide goes down to the lake, 
looks at the sky, and concludes that if the wind shifts 
a p'int more, there is no telling what sort of weather 
we shall have. Meantime the drops patter thicker on 
the leaves overhead, and the leaves, in turn, pass the 
water down to the table ; the sky darkens ; the wind 
rises ; there is a kind of shiver in the woods ; and we 
scud away into the shanty, taking the remains of our 
supper, and eating it as best we can. The rain in- 
creases. The fire sputters and fumes. All the trees 
are dripping, dripping, and the ground is wet. We 
cannot step out-doors without getting a drenching. 
Like sheep, we are penned in the little hut, where no 
one can stand erect. The rain swirls into the open 
front, and wets the bottom of the blankets. The 



54 CAMPING OUT. 

smoke drives in. We curl up, and enjoy ourselves. 
The guides at length conclude that it is going to be 
damp. The dismal situation sets us all into good 
spirits ; and it is later than the night before when we 
crawl under our blankets, sure this time of a sound 
sleep, lulled by the storm and the rain resounding on 
the bark roof. How much better off we are than 
many a shelterless wretch ! "We are as snug as dry 
herrings. At the moment, however, of dropping off 
to sleep, somebody unfortunately notes a drop of wa- 
ter on his face ; this is followed by another drop ; in 
an instant a stream is established. He moves his 
head to a dry place. Scarcely has he done so, when 
he feels a dampness in his back. Reaching his hand 
outside, he finds a puddle of water soaking through 
his blanket. By this time, somebody inquires if it is 
possible that the roof leaks. One man has a stream 
of water under him ; another says it is coming into 
his ear. The roof appears to be a discriminating 
sieve. Those who are dry see no need of such a fuss. 
The man in the corner spreads his umbrella, and the 
protective measure is resented by his neighbor. In 
the darkness there is recrimination. One of the 
guides, who is summoned, suggests that the rubber 
blankets be passed out, and spread over the roof. The 
inmates dislike the proposal, saying that a shower- 
bath is no worse than a tub-bath. The rain continues 
to soak down. The fire is only half alive. The bed- 
ding is damp. Some sit up, if they can find a dry 
spot to sit on, and smoke. Heartless observations are 
made. A few sleep. And the night wears on. The 
morning opens cheerless. The sky is still leaking, 
and so is the shanty. The guides bring in a half- 
looked breakfast. The roof is patched up. There 



CAMPING OUT. 55 

are reviving signs of breaking away, delusive signs 
that create momentary exhilaration. Even if the 
storm clears, the woods are soaked. There is no 
chance of stirring. The world is only ten feet square* 

This life, without responsibility or clean clothes., 
may continue as long as the reader desires. There 
are those who would like to live in this free fashioc 
forever, taking rain and sun as heaven pleases ; and 
there are some souls so constituted that they cannot 
exist more than three days without their worldly bag- 
gage. Taking the party altogether, from one cause 
or another it is likely to strike camp sooner than was 
intended. And the stricken camp is a melancholy 
sight. The woods have been despoiled ; the stumps 
are ugly; the bushes are scorched ; the pine-leaf-strewn 
earth is trodden into mire ; the landing looks like a 
cattle-ford ; the ground is littered with all the un- 
sightly debris of a hand-to-hand life ; the dismantled 
shanty is a shabby object ; the charred and blackened 
logs, where the fire blazed, suggest the extinction of 
family life. Man has wrought his usual wrong upon 
Nature, and he can save his self-respect only by mov- 
ing to virgin forests. 

And move to them he will, the next season, if not 
this. For he who has once experienced the fascina* 
tion of the woods-life never escapes its enticement : m 
the memory nothing remains but its charm. 



A WILDERNESS ROMANCE, 



At the south end of Keene Valley, in the Adlron* 
dacks, stands Noon Mark, a shapely peak, thirty-five 
hundred feet above the sea, which, with the aid of the 
sun, tells the Keene people when it is time to eat din- 
ner. From its summit you look south into a vast wil- 
derness basin, a great stretch of forest little trodden, 
and out of whose bosom you can hear from the 
heights on a still day the loud murmur of Boquet. 
This basin of unbroken green rises away to the south 
and south-east into the rocky heights of Dix's Peak 
and Nipple Top, — the latter a local name which 
neither the mountain nor the fastidious tourist is able 
to shake off. Indeed, so long as the mountain keeps 
its present shape as seen from the southern lowlands, 
it cannot get on without this name. 

These two mountains, which belong to the great 
system of which Marcy is the giant centre, and are in 
the neighborhood of five thousand feet high, on the 
southern outposts of the great mountains, form the 
gate-posts of the pass into the south country. This 
opening between them is called Hunter's Pass. It is 
the most elevated and one of the wildest of the moun- 
tain passes. Its summit is thirty-five hundred feet 
high. In former years it is presumed the hunters oc- 
casionally followed the game through ; but latterly it 
is rare to find a guide who has been that way, and the 



A WILDERNESS ROMANCE. 57 

tin-can and paper-collar tourists have not yet made it 
a runway. This seclusion is due not to any inherent 
difficulty of travel, but to the fact that it lies a little 
out of the way. 

We went through it last summer ; making our way 
into the jaws from the foot of the great slides on Dix, 
keeping along the ragged spurs of the mountain 
through the virgin forest. The pass is narrow, walled 
in on each side by precipices of granite, and blocked 
up with the bowlders and fallen trees, and beset with 
pitfalls in the roads ingeniously covered with fair- 
seeming moss. When the climber occasionally loses 
sight of a leg in one of those treacherous holes, and 
feels a cold sensation in his foot, he learns that he has 
dipped into the sources of the Boquet, which emerges 
lower down into falls and rapids, and, recruited by 
creeping tributaries, goes brawling through the forest 
basin, and at last comes out an amiable and boat-bear- 
ing stream in the valley of Elizabeth Town. From 
the summit another rivulet trickles away to the south, 
and finds its way through a frightful tamarack swamp, 
and through woods scarred by ruthless lumbering, to 
Mud Pond, a quiet body of water, with a ghastly 
fringe of dead trees, upon which people of grand in- 
tentions and weak vocabulary are trying to fix the 
name of Elk Lake. The descent of the pass on that 
side is precipitous and exciting. The way is in the 
stream itself ; and a considerable portion of the dis- 
tance we swung ourselves down the faces of consider- 
able falls, and tumbled down cascades. The descent, 
however, was made easy by the fact that it rained, 
and every footstep was yielding and slippery. Why 
sane people, often church-members respectably con- 
nected, will subject themselves to this sort of treat- 



58 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE. 

ment, — be wet to the skin, bruised by the rocks, and 
flung about among the bushes and dead wood until 
the most necessary part of their apparel hangs in 
shreds, — is one of the delightful mysteries of these 
woods. I suspect that every man is at heart a rov- 
ing animal, and likes, at intervals, to revert to the 
condition of the bear and the catamount. 

There is no trail through Hunter's Pass, which, aa 
I have intimated, is the least frequented portion of 
this wilderness. Yet we were surprised to find a 
well-beaten path a considerable portion of the way 
and wherever a path is possible. It was not a mere 
deer's runway : these are found everywhere in the 
mountains. It is trodden by other and larger ani- 
mals, and is, no doubt, the highway of beasts. It 
bears marks of having been so for a long period, and 
probably a period long ago. Large animals are not 
common in these woods now, and you seldom meet 
any thing fiercer than the timid deer and the gentle 
bear. But in days gone by Hunter's Pass was the 
highway of the whole caravan of animals who were 
continually going backwards and forwards, in the 
aimless, roaming way that beasts have, between Mud 
Pond and the Boquet Basin. I think I can see now 
the procession of them between the heights of Dix and 
Nipple Top ; the elk and the moose shambling along, 
cropping the twigs ; the heavy bear lounging by with 
his exploring nose ; the frightened deer trembling at 
every twig that snapped beneath his little hoofs, in- 
tent on the lily-pads of the pond ; the raccoon and the 
hedgehog, sidling along ; and the velvet-footed pan- 
ther, insouciant and conscienceless, scenting the path 
with a curious glow in his eye, or crouching in an 
overhanging tree ready to drop into the procession at 



A WILDERNESS ROMANCE. 59 

the right moment. Night and day, year after year, 
I see them going by, watched by the red fox and the 
comfortably clad sable, and grinned at by the black 
cat, — the innocent, the vicious, the timid and the 
savage, the shy and the bold, the chattering slanderer 
and the screaming prowler, the industrious and the 
peaceful, the tree-top critic and the crawling biter, — - 
just as it is elsewhere. It makes me blush for my 
species when I think of it. This charming society is 
nearly extinct now : of the larger animals there only 
remain the bear, who minds his own business more 
thoroughly than any person I know, and the deer, 
who would like to be friendly with men, but whose 
winning face and gentle ways are no protection from 
the savageness of man, and who is treated with the 
same unpitying destruction as the snarling catamount. 
I have read in history that the amiable natives of 
Hispaniola fared no better at the hands of the brutal 
Spaniards than the fierce and warlike Caribs. As so- 
ciety is at present constituted in Christian countries, 
I would rather for my own security be a cougar than 
a fawn. 

There is not much of romantic interest in the Adi- 
rondacks. Out of the books of daring travellers, 
nothing. I do not know that the Keene Valley has 
any history. The mountains always stood here, and 
the Ausable, flowing now in shallows and now in rip- 
pling reaches over the sands and pebbles, has for ages 
filled the air with continuous and soothing sounds. 
Before the Vermonters broke into it some three-quar- 
ters of a century ago, and made meadows of its bot- 
toms and sugar-camps of its fringing woods, I sup- 
pose the red Indian lived here in his usual discom- 
fort, and was as restless as his successors, the summer 



60 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE. 

boarders. But the streams were full of trout then, 
and the moose and the elk left their broad tracks on 
the sands of the river. But of the Indian there is no 
trace. There is a mound in the valley, much like 
a Tel in the country of Bashan beyond the Jordan, 
that may have been built by some prehistoric race, 
and may contain treasure and the seated figure of 
a preserved chieftain on his slow way to Paradise. 
What the gentle and accomplished race of the Mound* 
Builders should want in this savage region, where the 
frost kills the early potatoes and stunts the scanty 
oats, I do not know. I have seen no trace of them, 
except this Tel, and one other slight relic, which came 
to light last summer, and is not enough to found the 
history of a race upon. 

Some workingmen, getting stone from the hillside 
on one of the little plateaus for a house-cellar, discov- 
ered, partly embedded, a piece of pottery unique in 
this region. With the unerring instinct of workmen 
in regard to antiquities, they thrust a crowbar through 
it, and broke the bowl into several pieces. The joint 
fragments, however, give us the form of a dish. It 
is a bowl about nine inches high and eight inches 
across, made of red clay, baked but not glazed. The 
bottom is round, the top flares into four corners, and 
the rim is rudely but rather artistically ornamented 
with criss-cross scratches made when the clay was 
soft. The vessel is made of clay not found about 
here, and it is one that the Indians formerly living 
here could not form. Was it brought here by rov- 
ing Indians who may have made an expedition to 
the Ohio ; was it passed from tribe to tribe ; or did it 
belong to a race that occupied the country before the 
Indian, and who have left traces of their civilized 
skill in pottery scattered all over the continent ? 



A WILDERNESS ROMANCE. 61 

If I could establish the fact that this jar was made 
bj a prehistoric race, we should then have four gen- 
erations in this lovely valley: the amiable Prehis- 
toric people (whose gentle descendants were probably 
killed by the Spaniards in the West Indies) ; the Red 
Indians ; the Keene Flaters (from Vermont) ; and 
the Summer Boarders, to say nothing of the various 
races of animals who have been unable to live here 
since the advent of the Summer Boarders, the valley 
being not productive enough to sustain both. This 
last incursion has been more destructive to the noble 
serenity of the forest than all the preceding. 

But we are wandering from Hunter's Pass. The 
western walls of it are formed by the precipices of 
Nipple Top, not so striking nor so bare as the great 
slides of Dix, which glisten in the sun like silver, but 
rough and repelling, and consequently alluring, I 
have a great desire to scale them. I have always had 
an unreasonable wish to explore the rough summit of 
this crabbed hill, which is too broken and jagged for 
pleasure, and not high enough for glory. This desire 
was stimulated by a legend related by our guide that 
night in the Mud Pond cabin. The guide had never 
been through the pass before ; although he was famil- 
iar with the region, and had ascended Nipple Top in, 
the winter in pursuit of the sable. The story he told 
does n't amount to much, — none of the guides' stories 
do, faithfully reported, — and I should not have be- 
lieved it if I had not had a good deal of leisure on my 
hands at the time, and been of a willing mind, and 
I may say in rather a starved condition as to any 
romance in this region. 

The guide said then — and he mentioned it casu- 
ally, in reply to our inquiries about ascending the 



62 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE. 

mountain — that there was a cave high up among the 
precipices on the southeast side of Nipple Top. He 
scarcely volunteered the information, and with seem- 
ing reluctance gave us any particulars about it. I 
always admire this art by which the accomplished 
story-teller lets his listener drag the reluctant tale of 
the marvellous from him, and makes you in a manner 
responsible for its improbability. If this is well-man= 
Hged, the listener is always eager to believe a great 
deal more than the romancer seems willing to tell, 
and always resents the assumed reservations and 
doubts of the latter. 

There were strange reports about this cave when 
ihe old guide was a boy, and even then its very exist- 
ence had become legendary. Nobody knew exactly 
where it was, but there was no doubt that it had been 
inhabited. Hunters in the forests south of Dix had 
seen a light late at night twinkling through the trees 
high up the mountain, and now and then a ruddy glare 
as from the flaring-up of a furnace. Settlers were few 
in the wilderness then, and all the inhabitants were 
well known. If the cave was inhabited, it must be by 
strangers, and by men who had some secret purpose 
in seeking this seclusion and eluding observation. If 
suspicious characters were seen about Port Henry, or 
if any such landed from the steamers on the shore of 
Lake Champlain, it was impossible to identify them 
with these invaders who were never seen. Their not 
being seen did not, however, prevent the growth of 
the belief in their existence. Little indications and 
rumors, each trivial in itself, became a mass of testi- 
mony that could not be disposed of because of its 
very indefiniteness, but which appealed strongly to 
bran's noblest faculty, his imagination, or credulity. 



A WILDERNESS ROMANCE. 63 

The cave existed ; and it was inhabited by men 
who came and went on mysterious errands, and trans- 
acted their business by night. What this band of 
,">d venturers or desperadoes lived on, how they con- 
veyed their food through the trackless woods to their 
high eyrie, and what could induce men to seek suck 
a retreat, were questions discussed, but never settled,. 
They might be banditti ; but there was nothing ta 
plunder in these savage wilds, and, in fact, robberies 
and raids, either in the settlements of the hills or the 
distant lake shores were unknown. In another age, 
these might have been hermits, holy men who had 
retired from the world to feed the vanity of their god- 
liness in a spot where they were subject neither to 
interruption nor comparison ; they would have had 
a shrine in the cave, and an image of the Blessed Vir- 
gin, with a lamp always burning before it and send- 
ing out its mellow light over the savage waste. A 
more probable notion was that they were romantic 
Frenchmen who had grown weary of vice and refine- 
ment together, — possibly princes, expectants of the 
throne, Bourbon remainders, named Williams or oth- 
erwise, unhatched eggs, so to speak, of kings, who had 
withdrawn out of observation to wait for the next 
turn-over in Paris. Frenchmen do such things. If 
they were not Frenchmen, they might be horse-thieves 
or criminals, escaped from justice or from the friendly 
state-prison of New York. This last supposition was, 
however, more violent than the others, or seems so to 
us in this day of grace. For what well-brought-up 
New York criminal would be so insane as to run away 
from his political friends the keepers, from the easily- 
had companionship of his pals outside, and from the 
society of his criminal lawyer, and, in short, to put 



64 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE. 

himself into the depths of a wilderness out of which 
escape, when escape was desired, is a good deal more 
difficult than it is out of the swarming jails of the 
Empire State ? Besides, how foolish for a man, if he 
were a really hardened and professional criminal, hav- 
ing established connections and a regular business, to 
run away from the governor's pardon, which might 
have difficulty in finding him in the craggy bosom of 
Nipple Top ! 

This gang of men — there is some doubt whethei 
fchey were accompanied by women — gave little evi- 
dence in their appearance of being escaped criminals 
or expectant kings. Their movements were myste*. 
rious, but not necessarily violent. If their occupation 
could have been discovered, that would have furnished 
a clue to their true character. But about this the 
strangers were as close as mice. If anything could 
betray them, it was the steady light from the cavern, 
and its occasional ruddy flashing. This gave rise to 
the opinion, which was strengthened by a good many 
indications equally conclusive, that the cave was the 
resort of a gang of coiners and counterfeiters. Here 
they had their furnace, smelting-pots, and dies ; here 
they manufactured those spurious quarters and halves 
that their confidants, who were pardoned, were circu- 
lating, and which a few honest men were " nailing to 
4he counter." 

This prosaic explanation of a romantic situation 
satisfies all the requirements of the known facts, but 
the lively imagination at once rejects it as unworthy 
of the subject. I think the guide put it forward in 
order to have it rejected. The fact is, — at least, it 
has never been disproved, — these strangers whose 
movements were veiled belonged to that dark and 



A WILDERNESS ROMANCE. 65 

mysterious race whose presence anywhere on this con- 
tinent is a nest-egg of romance or of terror. They 
were Spaniards I You need not say buccaneers, you 
need not say gold-hunters, you need not say swarthy 
adventurers even : it is enough to say Spaniards ! 
There is no tale of mystery and fanaticism and daring 
I would not believe if a Spaniard is the hero of it, 
and it is not necessary either that he should have the 
high-sounding name of Bobadilla or Ojeda. 

Nobody, I suppose, would doubt this story, if the 
cave were in the mountains of Hispaniola or in the 
Florida Keys. But a Spaniard in the Adirondacks 
does seem misplaced. Well, there would be no ro- 
mance about it if he were not misplaced. The Span- 
iard, anywhere out of Spain, has always been mis- 
placed. What could draw him to this loggy and re- 
mote region? There are two substances that will 
draw a Spaniard from any distance as certainly as 
sugar will draw wasps, — gold and silver. Does the 
reader begin to see light ? There was a rumor that 
silver existed in these mountains. I do not know 
where the rumor came from, but it is necessary to 
account for the Spaniards in the cave. 

How long these greedy Spaniards occupied the cave 
on Nipple Top is not known, nor how much silver 
they found, whether they found any, or whether they 
secretly took away all there was in the hills. That 
they discovered silver in considerable quantities is a 
fair inference from the length of their residence in 
this mountain, and the extreme care they took to 
guard their secret, and the mystery that enveloped all 
their movements. What they mined, they smelted 
in the cave and carried off with them. 

To my imagination nothing is more impressive than 



66 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE. 

the presence in these savage wilds of these polished 
foreigners and accomplished metallurgists, far from 
the haunts of civilized man, leading a life of luxury 
and revelry in this almost inaccessible cavern. I can 
see them seated about their roaring fire, which re- 
vealed the rocky ribs of their den and sent a gleam 
over the dark forest, eating venison-pasty and cutting 
deep into the juicy haunch of the moose, quaffing deep 
draughts of red wine from silver tankards, and then 
throwing themselves back upon divans, and lazily puff- 
ing the fragrant Havana. After a day of toil, what 
more natural, and what more probable for a Spaniard? 
Does the reader think these inferences not war- 
ranted by the facts ? He does not know the facts. 
It is true that our guide had never himself personally 
visited the cave, but he has always intended to hunt 
it up. His information in regard to it comes from 
his father, who was a mighty hunter and trapper. 
In one of his expeditions over Nipple Top, he chanced 
upon the cave. The mouth was half concealed by 
undergrowth. He entered, not without some appre- 
hension engendered by the legends which make it fa- 
mous. I think he showed some boldness in venturing 
into such a place alone. I confess, that, before I went 
in, I should want to fire a Gatling gun into the mouth 
for a little while,. in order to rout out the bears which 
usually dwell there. He went in, however. The en- 
trance was low ; but the cave was spacious, not large, 
but big enough, with a level floor and a vaulted ceil- 
ing. It had long been deserted, but that it was once 
the residence of highly civilized beings there could be 
no doubt. The dead brands in the centre were the 
remains of a fire that could not have been kindled by 
wild beasts, and the bones scattered about had been 



A WILDERNESS ROMANCE. 67 

scientifically dissected and handled. There were also 
remnants of furniture and pieces of garments scat- 
tered about. At the further end, in a fissure of the 
rock, were stones regularly built up, the remains of a 
larger fire, — and what the hunter did not doubt was 
the smelting-furnace of the Spaniards. He poked 
about in the ashes, but found no silver. That had 
all been carried away. 

But what most provoked his wonder in this rude 
cave was a chair ! This was not such a seat as a 
woodman might knock up with an axe, with a rough 
body and a seat of woven splits, but a manufactured 
chair of commerce, and a chair, too, of an unusual 
pattern and some elegance. This chair itself was a 
mute witness of luxury and mystery. The chair it' 
self might have been accounted for, though I don't 
know how : but upon the back of the chair hung, as 
if the owner had carelessly flung it there before going 
out an hour before, a man's waistcoat. This waistcoat 
seemed to him of foreign make and peculiar style, 
but what endeared it to him was its row of metal but* 
tons. These buttons were of silver ! I forget now 
whether he did not say they were of silver coin, and 
that the coin was Spanish. But I am not certain 
about this latter fact, and I wish to cast no air of im- 
probability over my narrative. This rich vestment 
the hunter carried away with him. This was all the 
plunder his expedition afforded. Yes : there was 
one other article, and, to my mind, more significant 
than the vest of the hidalgo. That was a short and 
stout crowbar of iron ; not one of the long crowbars 
that farmers use to pry up stones, but a short handy 
one, such as you would use in diggiug silver-ore out 
of the cracks of rocks. 



68 A WILDERNESS ROMANCE. 

This was the guide's simple story. I asked him 
what became of the vest and buttons, and the bar of 
iron. The old man wore the vest until he wore it 
out ; and then he handed it over to the boys, and they 
wore it in turn till they wore it out. The buttons 
were cut off, and kept as curiosities. They were 
about the cabin, and the children had them to play 
with. The guide distinctly remembers playing with 
them ; one of them he kept for a long time, and he 
did n't know but he could find it now, but he guessed 
it had disappeared. I regretted that he had not treas- 
ured this slender verification of an interesting ro- 
mance, but he said in those days he never paid much 
attention to such things. Lately he has turned the 
subject over, and is sorry that his father wore out the 
vest and did not bring away the chair. It is his 
steady purpose to find the cave some time when he 
has leisure, and capture the chair, if it has not tum- 
bled to pieces. But about the crowbar ? Oh ! that is 
all right. The guide has the bar at his house in 
Keene Valley, and has always used it. 

I am happy to be able to confirm this story by say- 
ing that next day I saw the crowbar, and had it in 
my hand. It is short and thick, and the most inter- 
esting kind of crowbar. This evidence is enough for 
me. I intend in the course of this vacation to search 
for the cave ; and, if I find it, my readers shall k**ow 
the truth about it, if it destroys the only bit of ro. 
mance connected with these mountains. 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 



My readers were promised an account of Span- 
iard's Cave on Nipple-Top Mountain in the Adiron- 
dacks, if such a cave exists, and could be found. 
There is none but negative evidence that this is a 
mere cave of the imagination, the void fancy of a va- 
cant hour ; but it is the duty of the historian to pre- 
sent the negative testimony of a fruitless expedition 
in search of it, made last summer. I beg leave to 
offer this in the simple language befitting all sincere 
exploits of a geographical character. 

The summit of Nipple-Top Mountain has been 
trodden by few white men of good character : it is in 
the heart of a hirsute wilderness ; it is itself a rough 
and unsocial pile of granite nearly five thousand feet 
high, bristling with a stunted and unpleasant growth 
of firs and balsams, and there is no earthly reason 
why a person should go there. Therefore we went. 
In the party of three there was, of course, a chaplain. 
The guide was Old Mountain Phelps, who had made 
the ascent once before, but not from the northwest 
side, the direction from which we approached it. The 
enthusiasm of this philosopher has grown with his 
years, and outlived his endurance : we carried our 
own knapsacks and supplies, therefore, and drew upon 
him for nothing but moral reflections and a general 
knowledge of the wilderness. Our first day's route 



70 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 

was through the Gill-Brook woods and up one of its 
branches to the head of Caribou Pass, which sepa- 
rates Nipple-Top from Colvin. 

It was about the first of September ; no rain had 
fallen for several weeks, and this heart of the forest 
was as dry as tinder ; a lighted match dropped any. 
where would start a conflagration. This dryness has 
its advantages : the walking is improved ; the long 
heat has expressed all the spicy odors of the cedars 
and balsams, and the woods are filled with a soothing 
fragrance ; the waters of the streams, though scant 
and clear, are cold as ice ; the common forest chill is 
gone from the air. The afternoon was bright ; there 
was a feeling of exultation and adventure in stepping 
off into the open but pathless forest ; the great stems 
of deciduous trees were mottled with patches of sun- 
light, which brought out upon the variegated barks 
and mosses of the old trunks a thousand shifting hues. 
There is nothing like a primeval wood for color on a 
sunny day. The shades of green and brown are in- 
finite ; the dull red of the hemlock bark glows in the 
sun, the russet of the changing moose-bush becomes 
brilliant ; there are silvery openings here and there ; 
and everywhere the columns rise up to the canopy of 
tender green which supports the intense blue sky and 
holds up a part of it from falling through in frag- 
ments to the floor of the forest. Decorators can learn 
here how Nature dares to put blue and green in juxta- 
position : she has evidently the secret of harmonizing 
all the colors. 

The way, as we ascended, was not all through open 
woods ; dense masses of firs were encountered, jagged 
spurs were to be crossed, and the going became at 
length so slow and toilsome that we took to the rocky 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 71 

bed of a stream, where bowlders and flumes and cas- 
cades offered us sufficient variety. The deeper we 
penetrated, the greater the sense of savageness and 
solitude; in the silence of these hidden places one 
seems to approach the beginning of things. We 
emerged from the defile into an open basin, formed 
by the curved side of the mountain, and stood silent 
before a waterfall coming down out of the sky in the 
centre of the curve. I do not know anything exactly 
like this fall, which some poetical explorer has named 
the Fairy-Ladder Falls. It appears to have a height 
of something like a hundred and fifty feet, and the 
water falls obliquely across the face of the cliff from 
left to right in short steps, which in the moonlight 
might seem like a veritable ladder for fairies. Our 
impression of its height was confirmed by climbing 
the very steep slope at its side some three or four 
hundred feet. At the top we found the stream flow- 
ing over a broad bed of rock, like a street in the wil- 
derness, slanting up still towards the sky, and bor- 
dered by low firs and balsams, and bowlders com- 
pletely covered with moss. It was above the world 
and open to the sky. 

On account of the tindery condition of the woods 
we made our fire on the natural pavement, and se- 
lected a smooth place for our bed near by on a flat 
rock, with a pool of limpid water at the foot. This 
granite couch we covered with the dry and springy 
moss, which we stripped off in heavy fleeces a foot 
thick from the bowlders. First, however, we fed 
upon the fruit that was offered us. Over these hills 
of moss ran an exquisite vine with a tiny, ovate, green 
leaf, bearing small, delicate berries, oblong and white 
as wax, having a faint flavor of wintergreen and the 



72 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 

slightest acid taste, the very essence of the wilder, 
ness ; fairy food, no doubt, and too refined for pal* 
ates accustomed to coarser viands. There must ex- 
ist somewhere sinless women who could eat these ber- 
ries without being reminded of the lost purity and 
delicacy of the primeval senses. Every year I doubt 
not this stainless berry ripens here, and is unplucked 
by any knight of the Holy Grail who is worthy to eat 
it, and keeps alive, in the prodigality of nature, the 
tradition of the unperverted conditions of taste before 
the fall. We ate these berries, I am bound to say, 
with a sense of guilty enjoyment, as if they had been 
a sort of shew-bread of the wilderness, though I can- 
not answer for the chaplain, who is by virtue of his 
office a little nearer to these mysteries of nature than 
I. This plant belongs to the heath family, and is first 
cousin to the blueberry and cranberry. It is com- 
monly called the creeping snowberry, but I like better 
its official title of chiogenes, — the snow-born. 

Our mossy resting-place was named the Bridal 
Chamber Camp, in the enthusiasm of the hour, after 
darkness fell upon the woods and the stars came out. 
We were two thousand five hundred feet above the 
common world. We lay, as it were, on a shelf in the 
sky, with a basin of illimitable forests below us and 
dim mountain-passes in the far horizon. 

And as we lay there courting sleep which the blink- 
ing stars refused to shower down, our philosopher dis- 
coursed to us of the principle of fire, which he holds, 
with the ancients, to be an independent element that 
comes and goes in a mysterious manner, as we see 
flame spring up and vanish, and is in some way vital 
and indestructible, and has a mysterious relation to 
the source of all things. " That flame," he says, 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. T6 

" you have put out, but where has it gone ? " We 
could not say, nor whether it is anything like the 
spirit of a man which is here for a little houiv and 
then vanishes away. Our own philosophy of the cor- 
relation of forces found no sort of favor at that eleva- 
tion, and we went to sleep leaving the principle of fire 
in the apostolic category of " any other creature." 

At daylight we were astir, and having pressed the 
principle of fire into our service to make a pot of tea, 
we carefully extinguished it or sent it into another 
place, and addressed ourselves to the climb of some- 
thing over two thousand feet. The arduous labor of 
scaling an Alpine peak has a compensating glory ; 
but the dead lift of our bodies up Nipple-Top had no 
stimulus of this sort. It is simply hard work, for 
which the strained muscles only get the approbation 
of the individual conscience that drives them to the 
task. The pleasure of such an ascent is difficult to 
explain on the spot, and I suspect consists not so 
much in positive enjoyment as in the delight the 
mind experiences in tyrannizing over the body. I do 
not object to the elevation of this mountain, nor to the 
uncommonly steep grade by which it attains it, but 
only to the other obstacles thrown in tbe way of the 
climber. All the slopes of Nipple-Top are hirsute 
and jagged to the last degree. Granite ledges inter- 
pose ; granite bowlders seem to have been dumped 
Over the sides with no more attempt at arrangement 
than in a rip-rap wall ; the slashes and windfalls of a 
century present here and there an almost impenetra- 
ble chevalier des arbres ; and the steep sides bristle 
with a mass of thick balsams, with dead, protruding 
spikes, as unyielding as iron stakes. The mountain 
has had its own way forever, and is as untamed as a 



74 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 

wolf ; or rather the elements, the frightful tempests,, 
the frosts, the heavy snows, the coaxing sun, and the 
avalanches have had their way with it until its surface 
is in hopeless confusion. We made our way very 
slowly ; and it was ten o'clock before we reached what 
appeared to be the summit, a ridge deeply covered 
with moss, low balsams, and blueberry bushes. 

I say, appeared to be ; for we stood in thick fog or- 
in the heart of clouds which limited our dim view to a 
radius of twenty feet. It was a warm and cheerful 
fog, stirred by little wind, but moving, shifting, and 
boiling as by its own volatile nature, rolling up black 
from below and dancing in silvery splendor overhead. 
As a fog it could not have been improved ; as a me- 
dium for viewing the landscape it was a failure ; and 
we lay down upon the Sybarite couch of moss, as in a 
Russian bath, to await revelations. 

We waited two hours without change, except an oc- 
casional hopeful lightness in the fog above, and at 
last the appearance for a moment of the spectral 
sun. Only for an instant was this luminous promise 
vouchsafed. But we watched in intense excitement. 
There it was again ; and this time the fog was so 
thin overhead that we caught sight of a patch of blue 
sky a yard square, across which the curtain was in- 
stantly drawn. A little wind was stirring, and the 
fog boiled up from the valley caldrons thicker than 
ever. But the spell was broken. In a moment more 
Old Phelps was shouting, " The sun ! " and before 
we could gain our feet there was a patch of sky over- 
head as big as a farm. " See ! quick ! " The old 
man was dancing like a lunatic. There was a rift in 
the vapor at our feet, down, down, three thousand feet 
into the forest abyss, and lo ! lifting out of it yondei 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 75 

the tawny side of Dix, — the vision of a second, 
snatched away in the rolling fog. The play had just 
begun. Before we could turn, there was the gorge of 
Caribou Pass, savage and dark, visible to the bottom. 
The opening shut as suddenly ; and then, looking 
over the clouds, miles away we saw the peaceful farms 
of the Ausable Valley, and in a moment more the 
plateau of North Elba and the sentinel mountains 
about the grave of John Brown. These glimpses 
were as fleeting as* thought, and instantly we were 
again isolated in the sea of mist. The expectation of 
these sudden strokes of sublimity kept us exultingly 
on the alert ; and yet it was a blow of surprise wheii 
the curtain was swiftly withdrawn on the west, and 
the long ridge of Colvin, seemingly within a stone's 
throw, heaved up like an island out of the ocean, and 
was the next moment ingulfed. We waited longer 
for Dix to show its shapely peak and its glistening 
sides of rock gashed by avalanches. The fantastic 
clouds, torn and streaming, hurried up from the south 
in haste, as if to a witch's rendezvous, hiding and dis- 
closing the great summit in their flight. The mist 
boiled up from the valley, whirled over the summit 
where we stood, and plunged again into the depths. 
Objects were forming and disappearing, shifting and 
dancing, now in sun and now gone in fog, and in the 
elemental whirl we felt that we were " assisting " in 
an original process of creation. The sun strove, and 
his very striving called up new vapors ; the wind 
rent away the clouds, and brought new masses to 
surge about us ; and the spectacles to right and left, 
above and below, changed with incredible swiftness. 
Such glory of abyss and summit, of color and form 
and transformation, is seldom granted to mortal eyes. 



76 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 

For an hour we watched it until our vast mountain 
was revealed in all its bulk, its long spurs, its abysses 
and its savagery, and the great basins of wilderness 
with their shining lakes, and the giant peaks of the 
region, were one by one disclosed, and hidden and 
again tranquil in the sunshine. 

Where was the cave ? There was ample surface in 
which to look for it. If we could have flitted about, 
like the hawks that came circling round, over the 
steep slopes, the long spurs, the jagged precipices, I 
have no doubt we should have found it. But moving 
about on this mountain is not a holiday pastime ; and 
we were chiefly anxious to discover a practicable mode 
of descent into the great wilderness basin on th» 
south, which we must traverse that afternoon before 
reaching the hospitable shanty on Mud Pond. It was 
enough for us to have discovered the general where- 
abouts of the Spanish Cave, and we left the fixing of 
its exact position to future explorers. 

The spur we chose for our escape looked smooth in 
the distance ; but we found it bristling with obstruc- 
tions, dead balsams set thickly together, slashes of 
fallen timber, and every manner of woody chaos ; and 
when at length we swung and tumbled off the ledge 
to the general slope, we exchanged only for more dis- 
agreeable going. The slope for a couple of thousand 
feet was steep enough ; but it was formed of granite 
rocks all moss-covered, so that the footing could not 
be determined, and at short intervals we nearly went 
out of sight in holes under the treacherous carpeting. 
Add to this that stems of great trees were laid longi- 
tudinally and transversely and criss-cross over and 
among the rocks, and the reader can see that a good 
deal of work needs to be done to make this a practi* 
cable highway for anything but a squirrel. 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 77 

We had had no water since our daylight breakfast ; 
our lunch on the mountain had been moistened only 
by the fog. Our thirst began to be that of Tantalus, 
because we could hear the water running deep down 
among the rocks, but we could not come at it. The 
imagination drank the living stream, and we realized 
anew what delusive food the imagination furnishes in 
an actual strait. A good deal of the crime of this 
world, I am convinced, is the direct result of the un- 
licensed play of the imagination in adverse circum- 
stances. This reflection had nothing to do with our 
actual situation ; for we added to our imagination 
patience, and to our patience long-suffering, and prob- 
ably all the Christian virtues would have been devel- 
oped in us if the descent had been long enough. 
Before we reached the bottom of Caribou Pass, the 
water burst out from the rocks in a clear stream that 
was as cold as ice. Shortly after, we struck the roar- 
ing brook that issues from the Pass to the south. It 
is a stream full of character, not navigable even for 
trout in the upper part, but a succession of falls, cas- 
cades, flumes, and pools, that would delight an artist. 
It is not an easy bed for anything except water to de- 
scend ; and before we reached the level reaches, where 
the stream flows with a murmurous noise through 
open woods, one of our party began to show signs of 
exhaustion. 

This was Old Phelps, whose appetite had failed the 
day before, — his imagination being in better working 
order than his stomach : he had eaten little that day, 
and his legs became so groggy that he was obliged to 
rest at short intervals. Here was a situation ! The 
afternoon was wearing away. We had six or seven 
miles of unknown wilderness to traverse, a portion of 



78 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 

it swampy, in which a progress of more than a mile 
an hour is difficult, and the condition of the guide 
compelled even a slower march. What should we do 
in that lonesome solitude if the guide became dis- 
abled ? We could n't carry him out ; could we find 
our own way out to get assistance ? The guide him- 
self had never been there before ; and although he 
knew the general direction of our point of egress, and 
was entirely adequate to extricate himself from any 
position in the woods, his knowledge was of that occult 
sort possessed by woodsmen which it is impossible to 
communicate. Our object was to strike a trail that 
led from the Au Sable Pond, the other side of the 
mountain range, to an inlet on Mud Pond. We knew 
that if we travelled southwestward far enough we 
must strike that trail, but how far ? No one could tell. 
If we reached that trail, and found a boat at the inlet, 
there would be only a row of a couple of miles to the 
house at the foot of the lake. If no boat was there, 
then we must circle the lake three or four miles far- 
ther through a cedar-swamp, with no trail in partic- 
ular. The prospect was not pleasing. We were short 
of supplies, for we had no£ expected to pass that 
night in the woods. The pleasure of the excursion 
began to develop itself. 

We stumbled on in the general direction marked 
out, through a forest that began to seem endless as 
hour after hour passed, compelled as we were to make 
long detours over the ridges of the foot-hills to avoid 
the swamp, which sent out from the border of the lake 
long tongues into the firm ground. The guide became 
more ill at every step, and needed frequent halts and 
long rests. Food he could not eat ; and tea, water, 
and even brandy, he rejected. Again and again the 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 79 

old philosopher, enfeebled by excessive exertion and 
illness, would collapse in a heap on the ground, an 
almost comical picture of despair, while we stood and 
waited the waning of the day, and peered forward in 
vain for any sign of an open country. At every brook 
we encountered, we suggested a hale for the night, 
while it was still light enough to select a camping- 
place, but the plucky old man would n't hear of it i 
the trail might be only a quarter of a mile ahead, and 
we crawled on again at a snail's pace. His honor as 
a guide seemed to be at stake ; and, besides, he con- 
fessed to a notion that his end was near, and he did n't 
want to die like a dog in the woods. And yet, if this 
was his last journey, it seemed not an inappropriate 
ending for the old woodsman to lie down and give up 
the ghost in the midst of the untamed forest and the 
solemn silences he felt most at home in. There is a 
popular theory, held by civilians, that a soldier likes 
to die in battle. I suppose it is as true that a woods- 
man would like to " pass in his chips," — the figure 
seems to be inevitable, — struck down by illness and 
exposure, in the forest solitude, with heaven in sight 
and a tree-root for his pillow. 

The guide seemed really to fear that, if we did not 
get out of the woods that night, he would never go 
out ; and, yielding to his dogged resolution, we kept 
*»n in search of the trail, although the gathering of 
dusk over the ground warned us that we might easily 
cross the trail without recognizing it. We were trav- 
elling by the light in the upper sky, and by the forms 
of the tree-stems, which every moment grew dimmer. 
At last the end came. We had just felt our way over 
what seemed to be a little run of water, when the old 
man sunk down, remarking, " I might as well die here 
as anywhere," and 'was silent. 



80 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 

Suddenly night fell like a blanket on us. We 
could neither see the guide nor each other. We be- 
came at once conscious that miles of night on all sides 
shut us in. The sky was clouded over : there was n't 
a gleam of light to show us where to step. Our first 
thought was to build a fire, which would drive back 
the thick darkness into the woods, and boil some 
water for our tea. But it was too dark to use the axe. 
We scraped together leaves and twigs to make a 
blaze, and, as this failed, such dead sticks as we could 
find by groping about. The fire was only a tempo- 
rary affair, but it sufficed to boil a can of water. 
The water we obtained by feeling about the stones of 
the little run for an opening big enough to dip our 
cup in. The supper to be prepared was fortunately 
simple. It consisted of a decoction of tea and other 
leaves which had got into the pail, and a part of a loaf 
of bread. A loaf of bread which has been carried in 
a knapsack for a couple of days, bruised and handled 
and hacked at with a hunting-knife, becomes an unin- 
teresting object. But we ate of it with thankfulness, 
washed it down with hot fluid, and bitterly thought of 
the morrow. Would our old friend survive the 
night? Would he be in any condition to travel in 
the morning ? How were we to get out with him or 
without him? 

The old man lay silent in the bushes out of sight, 
and desired only to be let alone. We tried to tempt 
him with the offer of a piece of toast : it was no temp- 
tation. Tea, we thought, would revive him : he re- 
fused it. A drink of brandy would certainly quicken 
his life : he could n't touch it. We were at the end of 
our resources. He seemed to think, that, if he were 
at home, and could get a bit of fried bacon, or a piece 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 81 

of pie, he should be all right. We knew no more 
how to doctor him than if he had been a sick bear. 
He withdrew within himself, rolled himself up, so to 
speak, in his primitive habits, and waited for the heal- 
ing power of nature. Before our feeble fire disap- 
peared, we smoothed a level place near it for Phelps 
to lie on, and got him over to it. But it did n't suit : 
it was too open. In fact, at the moment some drops 
of rain fell. Rain was quite outside of our pro- 
gramme for the night. But the guide had an instinct 
about it ; and, while we were groping about some yards 
distant for a place where we could lie down, he 
crawled away into the darkness, and curled himself 
up amid the roots of a gigantic pine, very much as a 
bear would do, I suppose, with his back against the 
trunk, and there passed the night comparatively dry 
and comfortable ; but of this we knew nothing until 
morning, and had to trust to the assurance of a voice 
out of the darkness that he was all right. 

Our own bed where we spread our blankets was 
excellent in one respect, — there was no danger of 
tumbling out of it. At first the rain pattered gently 
on the leaves overhead, and we congratulated ourselves 
on the snugness of our situation. There was some- 
thing cheerful about this free life. We contrasted 
our condition with that of tired invalids who were 
tossing on downy beds, and wooiug sleep in vain. 
^Nothing was so wholesome and invigorating as this 
bivouac in the forest. But, somehow, sleep did not 
come. The rain had ceased to patter, and began to 
fall with a steady determination, a sort of soak, soak, 
all about us. In fact, it roared on the rubber blanket, 
and beat in our faces. The wind began to stir a 
little, and there was a moaning on high. Not cone 



82 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 

tented, with dripping, the rain was driven into oui 
faces. Another suspicious circumstance was no- 
ticed. Little rills of water got established along 
the sides under the blankets, cold, undeniable 
streams, that interfered with drowsiness. Pools 
of water settled on the bed ; and the chaplain had 
a habit of moving suddenly, and letting a quart or 
two inside, and down my neck. It began to be 
evident that we and our bed were probably the wet- 
test objects in the woods. The rubber was an excel- 
lent catch-all. There was no trouble about ventila- 
tion, but we found that we had established our quar- 
ters without any provision for drainage. There was 
not exactly a wild tempest abroad ; but there was a 
degree of liveliness in the thrashing limbs and the 
creaking of the tree-branches which rubbed against 
each other, and the pouring rain increased in volume 
and power of penetration. Sleep was quite out of the 
question, with so much to distract our attention. In 
fine, our misery became so perfect that we both broke 
out into loud and sarcastic laughter over the absurd- 
ity of our situation. We had subjected ourselves to 
all this forlornness simply for pleasure. Whether 
Old Phelps was still in existence, we could n't tell : 
we could get no response from him. With daylight, 
if he continued ill and could not move, our situation 
would be little improved. Our supplies were gone v 
we lay in a pond, a deluge of water was poui'ing down 
on us. This was summer recreation. The whole 
thing was so excessively absurd, that we laughed 
again, louder than ever. We had plenty of this sort 
of amusement. 

Suddenly through the night we heard a sort of 
reply that started us bolt upright. This was a pro- 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 83 

longed squazck. It was like the voice of no beast or 
bird with which we were familiar. At first it was 
distant, but it rapidly approached, tearing through the 
night and apparently through the tree-tops, like the 
harsh cry of a web-footed bird with a snarl in it ; in 
fact, as I said, a squawk. It came close to us, and 
then turned, and as rapidly as it came, fled away 
through the forest, and we lost the unearthly noise far 
up the mountain-slope. 

" What was that, Phelps ? " we cried out. But no 
response came ; and we wondered if his spirit had 
been rent away, or if some evil genius had sought it, 
and then, baffled by his serene and philosophic spirit, 
had shot off into the void in rage and disappointment. 

The night had no other adventure. The moon at 
length coming up behind the clouds lent a spectral as- 
pect to the forest, and deceived us for a time into the 
notion that day was at hand ; but the rain never 
ceased, and we lay wishful and waiting, with no item 
of solid misery wanting that we could conceive. 

Day was slow a-coming, and did n't amount to 
much when it came, so heavy were the clouds ; but 
the rain slackened. We crawled out of our water- 
cure " pack," and sought the guide. To our infinite 
relief he announced himself not only alive, but in a 
going condition. I looked at my watch. It had 
stopped at five o'clock. I poured the water out of it, 
and shook it : but, not being constructed on the hy- 
draulic principle, it refused to go. Some hours later 
we encountered a huntsman, from whom I procured 
some gun-grease ; with this I filled the watch, and 
heated it in by the fire. This is the most effectual 
way of treating a delicate Genevan timepiece. 

The light disclosed fully the suspected fact that our 



84 WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 

bed had been made in a slight depression : the undei 
rubber blanket spread in this had prevented the rain 
from soaking into the ground, and we had been lying 
in what was in fact a well-contrived bath-tub. While 
Old Phelps was pulling himself together, and we 
were wringing some gallons of water out of our blan= 
kets, we questioned the old man about the " squawk," 
and what bird was possessed of such a voice. It was 
not a bird at all, he said, but a cat, the black-cat of 
the woods, larger than the domestic animal, and an 
ugly customer, who is fond of fish, and carries a pelt 
that is worth two or three dollars in the market. 
Occasionally he blunders into a sable-trap ; and he 
is altogether hateful in his ways, and has the most 
uncultivated voice that is heard in the woods. We 
shall remember him as one of the least pleasant 
phantoms of that cheerful night when we lay in the 
storm, fearing any moment the advent to one of us of 
the grimmest messenger. 

We rolled up and shouldered our wet belongings, 
and, before the shades had yet lifted from the satu- 
rated bushes, pursued our march. It was a relief to 
be again in motion, although our progress was slow, 
and it was a question every rod whether the guide 
could go on. We had the day before us ; but if we 
did not find a boat at the inlet a day might not suffice,, 
In the weak condition of the guide, to extricate us 
from our ridiculous position. There was nothing he- 
roic in it ; we had no object ; it was merely, as it must 
appear by this time, a pleasure excursion, and we 
might be lost or perish in it without reward and with 
little sympathy. We had something like an hour and 
a half of stumbling through the swamp, when sud- 
denly we stood in the little trail ! Slight as it was, it 



WHAT SOME PEOPLE CALL PLEASURE. 86 

appeared to us a very Broadway of Paradise, if broad 
ways ever lead thither. Phelps hailed it, and sank 
down in it like one reprieved from death. But the 
boat ? Leaving him, we quickly ran a quarter of a 
mile down to the inlet. The boat was there. Our 
shout to the guide would have roused him out of a 
death slumber. He came down the trail with the 
agility of an aged deer ; never was so glad a sound in 
his ear, he said, as that shout. It was in a very jubL 
lant mood that we emptied the boat of water, pushed 
off, shipped the clumsy oars, and bent to the two-milo 
row through the black waters of the winding, desolate 
channel, and over the lake, whose dark waves were 
tossed a little in the morning breeze. The trunks of 
dead trees stand about this lake, and all its shores are 
ragged with ghastly drift-wood ; but it was open to 
the sky, and although the heavy clouds still obscured 
all the mountain ranges we had a sense of escape 
and freedom that almost made the melancholy scene 
lovely. 

How lightly past hardship sits upon us ! All the 
misery of the night vanished, as if it had not been, in 
the shelter of the log cabin at Mud Pond, with dry 
clothes that fitted us as the skin of the bear fits him in 
the spring, a noble breakfast, a toasting fire, solicitude 
about our comfort, judicious sympathy with our suffer- 
ing, and willingness to hear the now growing tale of 
our adventure. Then came, in a day of absolute idle- 
ness, while the showers came and went, and the moun- 
tains appeared and disappeared in sun and storm, that 
perfect physical enjoyment which consists in a feeling 
of strength without any inclination to use it, and in a 
delicious languor which is too enjoyable to be surren- 
dered to sleep. 



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